Carnival Cruise Lines is using port facilities that were stolen when Cuban dictator Fidel Castro took power, a pair of Cuban Americans alleged Thursday in historic lawsuits.
“Words cannot explain how I feel at this moment,” Javier Garcia-Bengochea, one of the plaintiffs, said in a statement accompanying the court documents. “For the first time in 59 years, an American victim of theft by the Castro regime can stand before you, legitimately assert their property rights, and seek damages from those who are benefiting from something that was stolen from them.”
Garcia-Bengochea filed his suit alongside Michael Behn, who brought a separate suit in the name of Havana Docks Company. They argue that Carnival, which has been offering cruises to Cuba since 2016 as part of then-President Barack Obama’s normalization of ties with Havana, is profiting from two port facilities that the regime seized from their families.
“In 1960, the Castro brothers and their Communist Party friends forcefully stole our property from my grandfather — at gunpoint in his office,” plaintiff Mickael Behn said in his statement. “That was the business his father built in 1917 to supply and modernize Havana. For years, the cruise lines have been using our Havana Docks Port infrastructure without any consequence. This is absolutely reprehensible.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced last month that Title III of the Libertad Act, also known as the Helms-Burton law, would take full effect for the first time on May 2. Cuba hawks hope the lawsuits will drive international investors away from the island, thereby depriving the regime of revenue.
“In addition to being newly vulnerable to lawsuits, they could be abetting the Cuban regime’s abuses of its own people,” said Pompeo. “Those doing business in Cuba should fully investigate whether they are connected to property stolen in service of a failed communist experiment. I encourage our friends and allies alike to likewise follow our lead and stand with the Cuban people.”
A lawyer for Carnival countered that the cruises were authorized by the Treasury Department during the Obama administration.
“The law is clear, if the trip was allowed, the Helms-Burton does not apply,” attorney George Fowler said Thursday. “It was not the intention of the Helms-Burton law to go after American companies with legal business in Cuba. They can try it, but I’ve been here for 40 years, and I tell them: good luck.“
Their lawsuits could be the first in a flood of court filings by Americans who lost property to the Cuban government, most of which would apply to foreign companies.
“This will cause unnecessary friction and undermines trust and predictability in the transatlantic partnership,” Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s top diplomat, said in a statement released minutes after the law took effect early Thursday morning, adding that the allies would “draw on all appropriate measures” to protect their companies from the law.
