HAVANA, Cuba, Apr 16 (ACN) The Italian banking company UniCredit Group joined the entities of several countries punished by the U.S. government for allegedly violating sanctions imposed by Washington against Cuba and other countries.
According to Prensa Latina, the Italian firm, the largest of its kind in that country and one of the most important in Europe, will have to pay U.S. entities 1.3 billion dollars.
Three banks belonging to that firm (UniCredit Bank AG, in Germany, UniCredit Bank Austria AG, and UniCredit S.p.A., in Italy) reached an agreement on that sum with the Treasury and State Departments, the Manhattan District Attorney and the New York branch of the Federal Reserve.
The Treasury Department said in a statement that its Office of Foreign Assets Control will charge 611 million dollars to the aforementioned banking institutions for transactions that would have ignored U.S. sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Myanmar.
In turn, the Department of Financial Services (DFS) of the state of New York said in a statement that imposed a fine of 405 million dollars to the UniCredit Group 'for violations of the laws of sanctions that involved billions of dollars in illegal and non-transparent transactions' related to those countries.
On the specific case of Cuba, the New York office detailed that UniCredit S.p.A. made 'illegal payments' related to entities in the Caribbean country.
Nearly 60 percent of UniCredit S.p.A.'s inadmissible transactions violated long-standing U.S. sanctions against Cuba, and many of those movements involved payments related to letters of credit for the shipment of goods to Cuba from various parts of the world, DFS added.
Such transactions, the statement said, ranged from at least 2003 to 2012, and the value of outgoing payments during that time exceeded 50 million dollars.
According to Bloomberg, UniCredit is just one of several European financial institutions that had to resolve similar cases, Prensa Latina reported.
In total, 15 banks in the so-called Old Continent have paid together more than 19.5 billion dollars for violating the U.S. punishments against several countries, the media said.
Less than a week ago, it was announced that Standard Chartered, based in the United Kingdom, will have to pay 1.1 billion dollars for allegedly violating the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed on Cuba almost 60 years ago, and the sanctions against Iran, Syria, Sudan and Myanmar.
Also, on April 11, it was reported that the British Acteon Group, a provider of submarine services in the oil and gas industry, will have to pay 227,500 dollars for infractions related to the Caribbean nation and Iran.
In all cases of Cuba these sanctions are part of the economic, commercial and financial war against it, it is illegal from the point of view of international law and morally this persecution of the transactions carried out by the Cuban government, whose objective is to further tighten the blockade that the White House has maintained for more than 60 years.
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