By Ken Guggenheim, Associated Press Writer.Yahoo! August
16, 2001.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Treasury Department has stepped up enforcement of the
travel ban to Cuba even as Congress acts to ease the prohibition.
Treasury has increased sharply the number of letters it sends seeking fines
from Americans thought to have violated the ban. Suspected violators must pay
the fine, prove their innocence or request a hearing before an administrative
judge.
The maximum penalty is $55,000, but lawyers say the average is about $7,500.
From May 4 to July 30, Treasury sent out 443 letters, compared with 74
letters from Jan. 3 to May 3. That is an average of about 19 a month before May
and 150 a month afterward.
President Bush (news - web sites) said on July 13 that he was tightening
enforcement of the 39-year-old embargo, intended to pressure democratic changes
on President Fidel Castro (news - web sites)'s communist island.
The Treasury said the increase in letters is the result of decisions made
during the Clinton administration.
Faced with a backlog of cases of Americans who may have traveled illegally
to Cuba, the Treasury office that oversees the sanctions temporarily assigned
more workers last fall to speed up the process, Treasury spokeswoman Tasia
Scolinos said. That led to the surge of letters in recent months.
Treasury is likely to keep up the pressure. The office is considering how to
implement Bush's order for stricter enforcement of the embargo, Scolinos said.
Congress, meanwhile, is moving to lift the travel ban. A House amendment to
a Treasury spending bill would bar the department from enforcing it. The bill
will now be considered by the Senate.
Treasury's cracking down is ``just an example of how absurd it is for our
government to try to restrict where our citizens can go,'' said GOP Rep. Jeff
Flake (news - bio - voting record) of Arizona, who introduced the amendment.
Most U.S. citizens are effectively barred from visiting Cuba under laws that
prohibit Americans from spending money there. Journalists on assignment,
researchers and certain other categories of travelers are exempted.
During the Clinton administration, travel regulations were eased in hopes
that greater contacts between Cubans and Americans could help bring democratic
change. As travel to Cuba increased, Cuban-American groups accused Clinton of
doing little to enforce the embargo.
``Our sense was that under the previous administration, (Treasury) was
certainly not encouraged, and maybe actively discouraged, from enforcing the
law, and that under this administration, they've been told or allowed to do
their jobs,'' said Dennis Hays of the anti-Castro Cuban American National
Foundation.
Bush has counted on the support of politically important Cuban-Americans in
Florida, the pivotal state in the 2000 election where Bush's brother Jeb will
seek re-election as governor next year.
Many Cuban-American activists favor the travel ban, arguing that tourist
dollars help Castro's government. But Cuban-Americans also comprise the biggest
group of U.S. visitors to Cuba. Most travel under laws that allow them to make
annual humanitarian trips to Cuba to visit relatives.
The Cuban government estimates that 120,000 Cuban-Americans visited last
year, 60 percent of the 200,000 overall American visitors.
U.S. officials are unsure of the specific number of American visitors to
Cuba. Many travelers, both legal and illegal, fly through third countries, such
as Mexico and Canada. Also, most of the legal travelers, including
Cuban-Americans visiting relatives, need not apply for U.S. permits to visit
Cuba.
The New York-based U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council estimates 173,000
Americans visited Cuba last year, including 22,000 in defiance of the travel
ban.
Treasury has various ways of identifying Americans who have visited Cuba
illegally, including the travelers' admissions on Customs forms and surveillance
of Americans getting off flights from Cuba at foreign airports.
An American suspected of flying illegally may at first receive a letter from
Treasury requesting information about the trip.
In one high-profile example, Scolinos confirmed Treasury is looking into a
trip to Cuba in February involving top entertainment executives, including chief
executives Leslie Moonves of CBS and Tom Freston of MTV.
The executives' attorney, Richard Popkin of Washington, declined comment
On the Net:
Treasury Department Cuba travel regulations:
http://www.treas.gov/ofac/cubapage.html
National Lawyers Guild web page on Cuba:
http://www.nlg.org/cuba-subcommittee-homepage.htm
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