Donald Trump's administration imposed sanctions this Monday against the state company American International Services (AIS) - a branch of the financial company FINCIMEX- for constituting a vehicle of the Cuban military to collect commissions and manipulate the remittance and currency market on the island, indicated an official statement.
"Today we placed sanctions on AIS, a company controlled by the Cuban military that steals money from remittances sent to the Cuban people. AIS's income funds the regime's oppression and interference in Venezuela. This action will reduce the regime's ability to repress its own people," the Secretary of State wrote on Twitter, Mike Pompeo.
The State Department's decision comes just three months after a similar sanction was applied against FINCIMEX, which implies the designation of AIS in the Cuban Restricted Entities List (CRL), prevented from negotiating with citizens and companies under US jurisdiction.
“AIS is a financial institution controlled by the Cuban army that processes remittances sent to the Cuban people. The Cuban military also uses AIS, its parent company FINCIMEX and other entities to collect fees and manipulate the remittance and currency market as part of the regime's schemes to earn money and support their repressive apparatus", indicates the statement released by the State Department.
The document adds that “the profits obtained from these operations disproportionately benefit the Cuban army, promoting the repression of the Cuban people and financing Cuba's interference in Venezuela.”
For this reason, we urge "anyone who sends remittances to their relatives in Cuba to use means other than the remittance entities controlled by the Cuban government."
The inclusion of AIS in the so-called blacklist of the State Department comes less than a week after FINCIMEX announced the resumption of card issuance, after August 17 the company announced that no new applications would be accepted of currency cards neither in Freely Convertible Currency (MLC) nor in CUC, attributing it to a rise in demand that exceeded its import capacity for some inputs.
In fact, AIS was the only entity under the umbrella of CIMEX - controlled by the military corporation GAESA - that had not been sanctioned by Washington as part of its offensive to reinforce the embargo and restrict remittance flows to the island.
The sanction imposed also recalled that “the president Trump has made it clear that he supports the Cuban people in its long fight for freedom and against the communist regime in Havana", which is why the US government considers that adding AIS to the list of restricted entities "promotes the Administration's objective of preventing the Cuban army from controlling and benefit from the flow of remittances that, in turn, should benefit the Cuban people.”
“People should be able to receive funds from their family abroad without having to line the pockets of their oppressors”, notes the document.
He concludes that “the Cuban people deserve to live in freedom and dignity, able to choose their leadership and provide for themselves and their families. "The United States supports the Cuban people in their struggle to achieve this vision and looks forward to the day when the dream of freedom becomes a reality."
Military-owned FINCIMEX is the main Cuban partner of foreign credit card companies and the company Western Union, which Cubans in the United States have been using since 1999 to send money to their relatives on the island.
The inclusion of FINCIMEX on the blacklist of the United States last June has not yet been implemented by the Treasury Department. More than three months later, has not yet been regulated by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and at the moment it has not had a real consequence for remittances destined for Cuba, since Western Union operations remain unchanged.
In the case of the branch sanctioned this Monday, American International Services is in charge of processing the AIS cards, which operate only through the sending of remittances and allow Cubans on the island to receive money from their relatives residing abroad to buy in stores in freely convertible currency (MLC), open since last October in the country.
Last Saturday FINCIMEX issued an alert about an alleged fraud from the United States related to the AIS cards website, and said that the domain created as aisremesascuba.com, could put the integrity of the client's data at risk.
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