Another foreign company gets fined due to US blockade of Cuba

Another foreign company gets fined due to US blockade of CubaHAVANA, Cuba, Jun 9 (ACN) The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) fined the American Honda Finance Corporation (AHFC) 87,255 US dollars for violating US regulations that are part of the blockade against Cuba.

According to a document accessed by Cuban News Agency on the website of the US Treasury Department, one of Canada's AHFC subsidiaries, Honda Canada Finance Inc., approved and financed 13 car lease agreements between the Cuban Embassy in that country and a Honda dealership in Ottawa between February 2011 and March 2014.

The Canadian subsidiary of the American Honda Finance Corporation, a California-based motor vehicle financing company, had already rejected, on March 30, 2015, a transfer of the island's diplomatic institution in that country, for cars that were due for replacement.

This fine adds to the long list of extraterritorial sanctions of the US government, protected in the framework of laws that regulates the economic, commercial and financial blockade against Cuba.

In January, just a week before President Barack Obama's term ended, the US Treasury Department imposed fines on the nonprofit Alliance for Responsible Politics for Cuba (ARCPF) and Canadian bank Toronto Dominion (TD), for amounts of $ 10,000 and $ 955,750, respectively, for violating regulations of the blockade against Cuba.

Since the announcements of December 17, 2014, the US government has fined 11 entities - seven Americans and four foreigners - for over 2.842 billion dollars.

During Obama's term of office (2009-2017), 56 fines were imposed for violations of sanctions regimes against Cuba and other countries, amounting to some 14.272 billion dollars.

The sanction against the American Honda Finance Corporation demonstrates the persistence of the economic, commercial and financial blockade, and its extraterritorial reach, with the consequent negative consequences that this has for Cuban economic and social development, and its external economic relations.