Havana: Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez on Monday rejected the new measures announced by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to tighten the blockade policy against Cuba, Prensa Latina reports.
On his Twitter account, the foreign minister denounced the measures adopted by the Trump administration against the companies Gaesa, Fincimex and Kave Coffee S.A.
‘Cuba will get ahead no matter how many entities they include in their spurious lists. Every US foreign policy action reinforces the isolation and international discredit to which Trump and his team led it,’ Rodriguez wrote.
On Monday, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) included the three Cuban companie on its ‘black list’ and imposed sanctions on Nicaraguans Marvin Ramiro Aguilar, Walmaro Antonio Gutierrez and Fidel de Jesus Dominguez.
Pompeo justified this action with the pretext of putting an end to economic practices that ‘disproportionately benefit’ governments such as those of Cuba and Nicaragua.
Through a communiqué, the Secretary of State considered that the firms have a strategic role in Cuba’s economy.
During the last few months and in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the OFAC has increased restrictions on Cuban enterprises, which even led to the closure of the Western Union in the country, a legal way of sending remittances to Cubans.
According to official data, for the first time in six decades, the blockade has caused losses of over five billion dollars in one year.
The extraterritorial application of this US hostile policy worsened between 2019 and 2020, when the OFAC imposed 12 penalties on US companies and from third countries that exceeded 2,403,985,125 million dollars.