Citigroup, a survivor of the 1929 depression and one of the largest financial institutions on the planet, has been sanctioned by the US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) with a fine of 16,250 dollars.The fine, enabled by legislation designed to enforce the illegal 50-year US blockade of Cuba, was imposed because Citigroup “Didn't have a license and acted outside of its authority” when it accepted “the payment of goods sent through a Cuban company.”
Citigroup voluntarily revealed the infraction to the authorities with OFAC not giving any further details of the largest fine imposed in the fiscal year 2008, which started last October.
From 2004, George W. Bush hardened the commercial war against the island with special measures to limit visits and family remittances to the Caribbean nation. Among the banks with the biggest fines during recent years are the Union of Switzerland Banks (UBS) with 100 million dollars in fines in 2004 and the National Bank of Australia with $100,000 in 2007.
Congresswoman and Terrorist Meet in Miami
Meanwhile Monday's edition of Granma Daily reports that the US Right-Wing Congressional Representative and a Bush appointee to the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs Ileana Ros-Lehtinen attended a meeting together with international terrorist Luis Posada Carribes.
Posada, wanted in Venezuela for the midair bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976, made a noisy appearance at the Miami meeting accompanied by his usual Alpha 66 associated bodyguards.
In a commentary entitled, "Representative Ros-Lehtinen and Posada, meeting in an assembly of terrorists", the official Cuban daily pointed out the hypocrisy of Ros-Lehtinen presents at a meeting was sponsored by a terrorist organization.
Cuba still resisting 47 years after the US Bombardment
April 15th marks the 47th anniversary of the bombing - by B-26 airplanes disguised in the insignia of the Cuban Air Force -of two air bases and a civilian airport in Cuba, a prelude to the US backed mercenary invasion on April 17th that has become know, in the west, as the Bay of Pigs (and Playa Girón in Cuba) an unsuccessful attempted invasion in southwest Cuba, planned and funded by the United States.
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