The London law firm PCB Byrne has stopped representing the National Bank of Cuba (BNC) and the Republic of Cuba in the lengthy litigation taking place in London against the fund CRF I Limited and ICBC Standard Bank, as recently reported by Bloomberg.
The reason: the Cuban regime and its former banking institution have gone over a year without paying the fees of their own lawyers.
The firm submitted in July a confidential request to terminate its representation, formalized by court order on July 31, without the formal reasons being made public. However, sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Bloomberg that the default was the cause.
The law firm itself acknowledged this with a brief statement: «PCB Byrne no longer represents the National Bank of Cuba or the Republic of Cuba in these proceedings.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 client relationships. We wish our former clients 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 claiming 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 path 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 significant 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 at that time by PCB Byrne, the law firm had reported expenses amounting to $2,407,905 and estimated that its total bill would amount to $3,224,246. This figure corresponded only to the initial phase of the litigation, which continued for more than three years and has now culminated in the withdrawal of PCB Byrne after more than a year without receiving its fees.
In November 2024, the Court of Appeal rejected the BNC's appeal. And in the spring of 2025, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom closed the judicial route by rejecting 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 settled.
The situation could worsen even further: if the BNC continues to avoid appearing in court, it risks losing up to €2.5 billion in claims through new default judgments. CRF even sent a letter directly to Miguel Díaz-Canel before the ruling in an attempt to reach an out-of-court solution, but received no response.
The non-payment to the lawyers themselves is yet another symptom of the regime's extreme financial precariousness.
At the beginning of the year, the Cuban government admitted to its creditors that it cannot normalize debt service in the short term. The debt to the Paris Club is approaching US$4.8 billion, and the island also has arrears with Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, and Spanish companies.
The geopolitical context is not favorable: 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 is hard to see a reintegration into financial markets without a political reform that drives 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 could send, but like with any national narrative, it's important to balance the story that is told externally with the one told to the people themselves, and that is something the Cuban government is currently struggling with.
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