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The agreement that promised to become the largest shipment of American fuel to Cuba in over six decades was suspended just days after being announced. Now, a specialized analysis asserts that this outcome was predictable.
Paul Kaye, Vice President of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, compared the failed Vanguard Energy project to the agreement signed in 2018 between Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Cuban Baseball Federation (CBF), an initiative that also ended up being blocked by Washington after it was discovered that it involved payments to an entity controlled by the Cuban regime.
According to Kaye, both the MLB case and that of Vanguard share the same mistake: moving forward with operations in Cuba without sufficient coordination with key U.S. government agencies responsible for overseeing sanctions and relations with the island.
"The most prudent strategy is to directly contact the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS), the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the Department of State, and the National Security Council before making any transactions related to Cuba public," the expert stated.
The comparison arises after Vanguard Energy suspended its plans to send 250,000 barrels of fuel to Cuba following the sanctions imposed by the administration of Donald Trump against CUPET, the Cuban state oil company.
The company from Coral Gables had announced an agreement to use CUPET's storage facilities and distribute fuel intended for humanitarian groups, embassies, and non-state private sector actors. However, a few days later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the inclusion of CUPET on the list of sanctioned entities by the United States.
For Kaye, the appointment was a readily foreseeable possibility.
The analyst recalled that CUPET is named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by Exxon Mobil under Title III of the Helms-Burton Act, a case that is currently awaiting a decision from the United States Supreme Court. Additionally, the state-owned oil company is part of the Cuban energy sector, one of the priority targets of the new sanctions policy driven by Washington.
The expert drew a parallel with the agreement reached in December 2018 between MLB and the Cuban Baseball Federation. At that time, the American league aimed to allow the direct contracting of Cuban players, but the deal was rejected by the Trump administration, which believed that the payments involved would benefit the Cuban government.
In contrast, Kaye pointed to the first direct investment authorized by the United States in a small private Cuban company in 2022 as a successful example. Unlike the other two cases, this operation was preceded by about a year of consultations, meetings, and negotiations with various federal agencies before receiving the corresponding license from OFAC.
The suspension of the Vanguard project not only leaves in limbo an operation that would have represented one of the largest supplies of U.S. fuel to Cuba since 1960, but also reinforces the message that, under the current pressure policy from Washington, any business involving Cuban state entities faces increasingly difficult legal and political hurdles to overcome.
For Kaye, the signs were there from the beginning. The question now is whether other companies interested in doing business with Cuba will take note of a story that, according to his analysis, ended exactly as one could expect.
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