3 | 18/02/2021 – 15:24 (GMT-4)
The U.S. Treasury Department imposed a fine on BitPay, a private company based in Atlanta, Georgia, for facilitating the processing of bitcoin payments to Cubans living on the island.
The Office for the Control of Foreign Assets (OFAC), which applied the sanction, said this Thursday in a communiqué that the company will have to pay more than half a million dollars ($ 507,375) “to settle its possible civil liability” for violating the embargo on Cuba.
This is the first Cuba-related sanction that OFAC has carried out since Joe Biden he took over the presidency on 20 January.
“BitPay allow people who appear to have been located in the Crimean region of Ukraine, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Sudan and Syria will transact with merchants in the United States and elsewhere using digital technology, ”the statement said.
“BitPay allowed people in these jurisdictions to make transactions for up to $ 129,000 related to digital currency,” OFAC explains.
According to the official report, between June 10, 2013 and September 16, 2018, BitPay processed 2,102 transactions on behalf of the people who, according to the IP addresses and information available on the invoices, were in Cuba.
“This conduct resulted in Apparent Violations of Executive Order 13685 of December 19, 2014,” including the Cuban Asset Control Regulations, the publication notes.
He claims that the sum of the civil monetary sanction applicable for such violations is $ 2,255,000, but considering some mitigating factors the sum of $ 507,375 was agreed.
The latest of the sanctions that had been applied to US companies to encourage trade with Cuba is also linked to digital currency transfers, and occurred last December, when the Treasury Department fined the BitGo technology company, From Palo Alto, California, which offered the service of digital wallets to people located in Cuba.
Several Washington-sanctioned countries, including those listed as sponsors of terrorism by the State Department, are inclined to use digital currency in their international transactions to evade financial controls. Nicolas Maduro’s regime in Venezuela is among the supporters of the digital check modality through Petro.
A month earlier OFAC forced Western Union to close its operations on the island after 21 years of service handing over remittances to Cubans.
The Donald Trump administration’s sanction against FINCIMEX, attached to CIMEX and under the control of the GAESA military, officially went into effect on November 27, and represented a severe financial blow to the Cuban regime, which has referred to the measure as an aggression.
Restoring the latter service will depend on President Joe Biden deciding to restore the remittance services by Western Union in Cuba, but so far the administration has not ruled on the matter.
However, on the eve Cuban-American leaders joined in a bipartisan petition to Biden so that his administration does not soften politics or open negotiations with Cuba until democratic advances are made on the island.
Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez, currently the highest-ranking Cuban-American politician in Washington, and Republicans Marc Rubio and Rick Scott, as well as Congressmen Carlos Giménez, Mario Diaz Balart and Maria Elvira Salazar and Miami mayors Hialeah, Coral Gables and Doral, asked the president to maintain the policy of sanctions against Havana and demand an end to human rights violations in the Caribbean country.