(Washington) Four shipping lines have been ordered by US courts to pay nearly US$450 million for using the port of Havana, which was nationalized by Cuban authorities in 1960.
In a ruling handed down Friday by a federal judge in Florida, Carnival, MSC SA, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian were each ordered to pay US company Havana Docks $109 million plus court costs.
The latter was stripped of its rights to operate the port without compensation after the Castro revolution on the Caribbean island.
Magistrate Beth Bloom said the four companies that anchor liners in Cuba “have each made substantial profits of several hundred million dollars from their illegal activities” at the port.
The United States has imposed an economic embargo against the island since 1962, but Democratic President Barack Obama eased it and allowed cruise ships to dock in Cuba in 2016, a decision his Republican successor, Donald Trump, later reversed.
However, the judgment was not based on this ban but on parts of the 1996 Act which was a dead letter until then.
At the time, the U.S. Congress wanted to discourage potential investors in Cuba by allowing the prosecution of those who profited from the assets of any American seized by Fidel Castro’s regime.
However, successive US presidents have blocked the measure until Donald Trump decided to allow it to take effect in 2019.
A string of legal actions followed and was the first to win against the cruise passengers. In March, Judge Bloom found four companies, “Transportation” and “Prohibited Tourism,” guilty under the Act.
On Friday, he set the compensation amount as a result of the ruling. “Given the law’s deterrent intent and the nature of the crime, a fine of more than 100 million per defendant is certainly reasonable,” he said.
His decision is subject to appeal, but could have major consequences for the Cuban economy, which is facing its worst crisis since the 1990s.
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