The company Western Union confirmed this Wednesday that it will maintain remittance payments in Cuba in convertible pesos (CUC) and denied that there is a business decision to reimburse shipments to its clients on the island in Cuban pesos (CUP).
Western Union's clarification came at the request of CyberCuba, after last Sunday the corporation's Spanish Twitter account issued a message assuring that it would refund customer shipments when the Cuban government proceeded with monetary unification and imposed the CUP as the only circulating asset in the country.
"The referenced tweet was posted in error. We regret any confusion this may have caused," a senior company official said in a statement. "At this time, money transfer payments in Cuba continue in CUC, while we explore all possible options to provide a money transfer service that is safe and reliable for our customers."
Western Union decided to delete the tweet from its official Spanish account as of Tuesday.
The erroneous message was posted in response to a question from user José Raúl Gallego, a journalist and professor based in Mexico, about Western Union's reasons for maintaining CUC remittances and how it would proceed in the face of the imminent monetary unification in Cuba. The response generated a wave of criticism and activated an online campaign with the hashtag #DineroNoPapeles.
In reality, Western Union is still evaluating a request made by the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC) since last October so that the remittances were delivered directly in dollars to the recipients on the island. The decision has been postponed due to a combination of factors ranging from ssanctions of the Department of State against the state financial company FINCIMEX, in charge of processing transactions sent to Cuba, until a legal claim before a federal court in Washington DC.
The panorama of money transfers to Cuba has been shaken after the opening of more than a hundred dollar stores for electrical equipment, food and hygiene products in Havana and the interior of the country, and the consequent devaluation of the CUC as the currency in use.
Even, The Cuban government eliminated the 10% tax on the US dollar at the end of July as part of a new package of economic measures to alleviate the crisis that the country is experiencing. The dollar tax was in force since 2004.
Interest in the CUC has plummeted among Cubans, while on the black market the exchange rate has reached between 1.50 and 2 CUC per dollar. Although Western Union does not provide data on the volume of its operations to any country, several independent sources and unauthorized testimonies from branch employees in the United States have confirmed to CyberCuba a decrease in remittance shipments from South Florida since the beginning of the year.
The official assured that Western Union remains committed to providing services between the United States and Cuba despite the difficult times imposed by the coronavirus crisis.
"We are navigating the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic to provide money transfer services in Cuba that fully comply with all local and international regulations," said the official.
However, heThe company declined to comment on the status of its evaluation for a possible change in remittance deliveries in the face of monetary unification. a topic that has occupied ample space in the official Cuban media since last August. Despite unofficial versions that the process would begin on October 1, the BCC flatly denied it.
"I am not surprised that Western Union has decided to remove the message on Twitter because it was clearly an unfortunate response, which breaks with the company's policy of not interfering in internal decisions of the countries that contract its financial services," he said. lawyer Sergio Comas, analyst of Cuban affairs.
Western Union services in Cuba have been undergoing a successive review since September 2019, when Donald Trump's administration ordered to limit the sending of family remittances to the island to $1,000 dollars per quarter, and eliminate donations to Cuban citizens from the United States. Until then, the quantities and frequency of operations were unlimited.
The company was forced to modify the regulations for remittances to Cuba. Subsequently, Last February, the company suspended money transfers to the island from third countries, which limited financial operations to its branches in the territory of the United States.
Sanctions and lawsuits against FINCIMEX
But the issue of remittances to Cuba is also at the center of the Trump administration's sanctions to reinforce the embargo and could be affected by the ruling of a lawsuit against the Cuban government, pending in a federal court in Washington DC.
Last June The State Department included FINCIMEX in the blacklist of Cuban entities that are prohibited from negotiating with United States companies, which poses a serious obstacle to the processing of Western Union remittances to Cuba.
However, although the sanction was announced, three months later it has not been regulated by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Department of the Treasury, and has not had a real consequence for remittances destined for Cuba. Western Union operations remain unchanged.
A Treasury Department spokesperson told CyberCuba that there is no established date to implement these regulations, which are in the process of being drafted. It is also unclear whether Western Union would have to change its agreement with FINCIMEX and look for an alternative company to function as the operating agent for its deliveries within Cuba.
However, The dilemma seems to be in a clause of the 2017 Presidential Memorandum, which records the sending and processing of authorized remittances among the exceptions in the implementation of measures against Cuba.
At the same time, the permanence of the agreement established between FINCIMEX and Western Union in 1999 depends on the outcome of a lawsuit filed by the Exxon Mobil corporation against the Cuban state companies CIMEX and CUPET under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act. FINCIMEX is associated with CIMEX, under the GAESA military conglomerate.
The case has been open since May 2019, and The Cuban government counterattacked the lawsuit with a 1,919-page motion asking for its dismissal.. The lawyers representing CIMEX and CUPET defended the shipments of remittances from the United States as a management unrelated to the trafficking of properties confiscated by the Cuban regime and argued that the remittances sent by Western Union are outside the legal scope of the plaintiff's claim.
Federal Judge Amit P. Mehta, who is presiding over the case, has set a deadline of September 29 for Exxon Mobil's response to the Cuban government's arguments.
"The litigation filed by Exxon Mobil is key to knowing whether FINCIMEX will be able to continue operating remittances sent from the United States and I hope that Western Union is very attentive to what the Washington court decides and is already looking for a bank or financial agency that does not depend on the military conglomerate GAESA to distribute the money within Cuba," said Comas.
Western Union, the main issuer of remittances to Cuba, provides its financial services through 502 branches located in 168 municipalities in the country.. Although the company does not report data on the value of its transactions, it is the largest operator of the $3.5 billion estimated in annual remittances to recipients based on the island.
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