Cuba, US begins talks on confiscated property, damages

The U.S. could conceivably demand full restitution at 100 cents on the dollar plus accrued interest, while Cuba has issued counterclaims for economic damage resulting from the decadeslong embargo.

Such discussions over implementing the U.S.-Cuba Migration Accords are held twice annually.

The talks, conducted in Havana for what the State Department official (who didn’t want to be identified), said was “the better part of a day”, apparently didn’t get much beyond a polite recitation of claims by each side.

The Cuban delegation was headed by Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno Fernandez, while the USA team was led by the State Department’s acting legal adviser, Mary McLeod.

“The meeting is the first step in what we expect to be a long and complex process, but the United States views the resolution of outstanding claims as a top priority for normalization”, the U.S. State Department said in a statement on Monday. Ever since the December 2014 announcement of normalization between the two countries, both countries have been trying to reestablish the diplomatic ties. “The government of Cuba has also raised claims against the United States related to the embargo”.

US and Cuban officials met in Havana on Tuesday to begin negotiating a possible settlement for $1.9 billion worth of American assets seized by Fidel Castro’s government in the early 1960s, as well as other claims built up over years of strained relations.

On the other side, Cuba claims to have suffered losses from the economic embargo, which was approved by Congress during the Cuban Missile Crisis but has endured long past the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

Trade experts and lawyers say the Cuban government will have a hard time recovering damages from sanctions.

“There is no global court to take a look at this, so it’s a bilateral negotiation, and the Cubans are very tough, very clever”, said Pedro Freyre, a Cuba expert at the Akerman LLP law firm in Miami. After changing hands through corporate mergers and sales, the majority of its shares are today are owned by Office Depot.

Corporate claims make up most of that money and include several Fortune 500 companies, including Coca-Cola Co., Exxon Mobil Corp., Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. and Colgate-Palmolive Co. “About half of the claims, now estimated at 8 000 million belong to only ten companies”, said CubaNet.