The London law firm PCB Byrne has ceased to represent the National Bank of Cuba (BNC) and the Republic of Cuba in the lengthy litigation being heard in the London courts against the fund CRF I Limited and ICBC Standard Bank, as revealed by Bloomberg recently.
The reason: the Cuban regime and its old banking institution have not paid the fees of their own lawyers for over a year.
The firm submitted in July a confidential request to terminate its representation, formalized by court order on July 31 without disclosing the formal reasons. However, sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Bloomberg that the non-payment was the cause.
The firm itself acknowledged it with a brief statement: «PCB Byrne no longer represents the National Bank of Cuba or the Republic of Cuba in these proceedings. We do not comment on the details of our relationships with clients. We wish our former clients all the best».
The case has its roots in commercial loans granted to the BNC by European banks in 1982 and 1984, with the Republic of Cuba as the guarantor.
CRF I Limited, an investment fund established in the Cayman Islands, acquired these credits in the secondary market and filed its claim in 2020. The fund is seeking approximately €70 million, while ICBC Standard Bank is involved in two separate proceedings with claims of around €200 million in principal and nearly €1,000 million in interest each.
The judicial trajectory has been a series of defeats for the BNC. The High Court of England and Wales recognized CRF as a legitimate creditor in April 2023.
The cost of the Cuban defense was already considerable from the early stages of the process. In January 2023, as the litigation entered its third year, the estimated expenses for both parties were around 5.8 million dollars.
In the case of BNC and the Republic of Cuba, represented then by PCB Byrne, the firm had reported expenses of $2,407,905 and estimated that their total invoice would amount to $3,224,246. This figure corresponded only to the initial stage of the litigation, which continued for more than three years, culminating now in the withdrawal of PCB Byrne after more than a year without collecting their fees.
In November 2024, the Court of Appeal rejected the appeal from BNC. And in the spring of 2025, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom closed the judicial avenue by dismissing the bank's final attempt to halt the lawsuit.
By failing to respond to the damage quantification phase, the BNC received on July 31 a default judgment for £18 million in damages plus costs in favor of CRF. Previously, in December 2025, a judge had already ordered the bank to pay £50,000 in legal costs, an amount that was also not paid.
The situation could worsen even further: if the BNC continues to avoid appearing in court, it risks losing up to €2.5 billion more in claims through new default judgments. CRF even sent a letter directly to Miguel Díaz-Canel before the ruling in an attempt to find an out-of-court solution, but received no response.
The non-payment to the lawyers themselves is another symptom of the extreme financial precariousness of the regime.
At the beginning of the year, the Cuban government admitted to its creditors that it cannot normalize debt servicing in the short term. The debt with the Paris Club is nearing US$4.8 billion, and the island also has outstanding debts with Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Spanish companies.
The geopolitical context does not help: after the capture of Nicolás Maduro by U.S. forces in January 2026, Cuba lost its main supplier of subsidized oil.
Daniel Lansberg-Rodríguez, co-founder of Aurora Macro Strategies, summarized the dilemma facing the regime: "It's hard to envision a reintegration into the financial markets without a political reform that fosters a new narrative for investing in Cuba that excites the markets."
Paying off inherited debts could be part of that narrative, it's a powerful message they can send, but like with any national narrative, the story told to the outside world needs to be balanced with the one told to the people themselves, and that is something the Cuban government is currently grappling with.
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