(The Center Square) – Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody on Thursday called on U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to stop the agency’s “continued support for Cuba’s communist interests.”
He did so after Cuban-American legislators raised the alarm about Chinese spies operating in Cuba, supposedly targeting Cuban Americans, as well as about the Biden administration recently allowing Cuban regime officials to visit the TSA facility at Miami International Airport.
He also did so after a former US diplomat in Miami pleaded guilty to charges of acting as a secret agent for the Cuban government.
What is at stake is that the Treasury Department issues new regulatory changes to the Cuban Assets Control Regulations, known as CACR amendments. They include authorizing Cuban citizens who identify themselves as “independent private sector entrepreneurs” to open and use U.S. bank accounts regardless of whether they physically live in the U.S. They also authorize “U-turn” transactions that reverse a ban on this 2019 Treasury Department practice.
Under the previous administration, the Treasury Department banned such transactions to deny Cuba “access to hard currency” and curb “the bad behavior of the Cuban government as it continues to support the long-suffering people of Cuba.”
Current policies, Moody says, benefit Cuba and “go against reasoned opposition and common sense.”
“President Biden continues to be manipulated by the Castro regime and now, for the first time in more than 60 years, the United States will open its banking institutions to those who can reinforce or be affiliated with the communist dictatorship,” Moody said in a statement. “These ill-considered amendments will likely do little to alleviate the suffering of the Cuban people and will only strengthen the bad actors who keep the Cuban people oppressed.”
Florida is home to the largest Cuban population in the United States, with the majority living in Miami. Although Cubans have fled to Florida demanding freedom from persecution by the Cuban communist regime, Moody maintains that the CACR amendments “may help the oppressors more than the oppressed.”
Last year, the Biden administration considered implementing the CACR amendments, but did not do so after receiving opposition from members of Congress and the Cuban American community. They emphasized that there is no legitimate free enterprise in communist Cuba and that any “businessman” is “under the total control of the government” of the Cuban regime.
The current amendments to the CACR do not require Cuban citizens using US bank accounts to provide proof that they are not connected to members of the communist government.
As a result, the regulations “could potentially allow companies owned or controlled by family members or associates of members of the communist regime to open bank accounts and infiltrate the US market by posing as ‘independent private sector entrepreneurs,’” Moody warned. Allowing U-turn transactions would only ensure that more money flows into communist Cuba and “would make American banking institutions a shiny new destination for those seeking to launder money to or from Cuba,” he said.
Cuba is designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism. Despite this, the Biden administration removed Cuba from the short list of countries considered uncooperative in the fight against terrorism, notes Moody.
Cuban American Rep. Carlos Giménez, R-Fla., and other Florida lawmakers have been sounding the alarm about Biden’s Cuba policies, including the TSA tour. In response, Giménez introduced legislation to prevent the TSA from granting sensitive security access to agents from countries designated as State Sponsors of Terrorism.
“You might think it’s unnecessary and common sense, but common sense is not very common in the Biden Administration,” he said.
He also sent a letter, along with Florida Republican U.S. Senators Rick Scott and Marco Rubio, to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and TSA Administrator David Pekoske demanding answers about the TSA’s Cuban tour.
“Only under the Biden administration would they allow a terrorist regime into our secure facilities at one of the busiest airports in the United States,” Rubio said, adding that he asked DHS officials “why they would be so oblivious.”
The TSA tour was the second time under Mayorkas that members of Cuba’s Communist Party were invited to visit U.S. facilities, Florida lawmakers said. In February 2023, the US Coast Guard invited Cuban officials to visit USCG headquarters in Washington, DC and tour US port facilities in Wilmington, North Carolina. In response, language was added to the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act to prohibit such tours from taking place in the future.
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