Panama Papers show Cuba used offshore firms to thwart embargo

[Zorro]

The Cuban government used the Panama law firm involved in the Panama Papers to create a string of companies in offshore financial havens that allowed it to sidestep the U.S. embargo in its commercial operations.

El Nuevo Herald identified at least 25 companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, Panama and the Bahamas and linked to Cuba.

The documents found in the Panama Papers are dated as far back as the early 1990s, when the Cuban economy crashed following the end of Moscow’s massive subsidies to the island. But Cuba kept its links with some of the firms until very recently.

Listed as a director of one of the companies is a brother of Gen. Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja — husband of Cuban ruler Raul Castro’s daughter and powerful head of the Cuban armed forces’ business conglomerate, GAESA.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/cuba/article82214612.html

Using Mossack Fonseca's services must be OK if Cuba did it.

[MADem]

1. Of course they did. That's no surprise that they got round the embargo.

People make fortunes facilitating that kind of thing.

[Zorro]

2. I think the Miami Herald may win a Pulitzer for this investigative reporting

[MADem]

3. It's definitely a "follow the money" expose.

But people would have to be thick to think this doesn't happen--it happens all the time. In Iran, you could get whatever you wanted, so long as it made a stop somewhere else, first.

People made their fortunes smuggling goods.

[Zorro]

4. Yes it happens all the time in the real world

But internet scholars won't believe it unless it's posted on a website, so that's what makes the story so significant.

And even then they might not believe it, since it doesn't conform to their worldview.