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Stephen Purvis, the developer of a $400 Million golf project in Cuba spent 16 months in a Cuban jail and has his project taken. His golf project was sold to China.Purvis thought he no longer had to worry about the risks of running a business in Cuba, given that his own firm, financed by private European backers, was among the best-established on the island. Since setting up there in 2000, it has invested in everything from tourism through to factories and docks, and even financed El Benny, a Cuban film about the country’s most famous singer, Benny Moré. Mr Purvis was also a pillar of Havana’s expatriate community, working as vice-chair of Havana’s international school, where diplomats sent their children, and producing “Havana Rakatan,” a Cuban dance show which has toured London’s West End. His connections, however, counted for nothing. In 2011, he was arrested and served 16 months. His investments were taken.
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Castro sentences Canadian CEO to 15 years in prison, takes $100 Million is AssetsIn 2014, a Cuban court has sentenced Canadian executive Cy Tokmakjian to 15 years in prison in a case his company and Western diplomats have called a chilling development for potential foreign investors. The Regime seized about $100 million worth of the company’s assets. The Tokmakjian Group, which did an estimated $80 million in business annually with Cuba until it was shuttered in September 2011. None of that mattered and the government proceeded with a trial which many labeled “show trial” and a “travesty of justice.”
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Cuban workers normally outsourced by the Regime, are able to sue under the UN International Labor Convention on Forced Labor; Opening of US-Cuba Relations Allows Litigation to be Brought in the USCuba's practice of "leasing" employees to foreign companies, and paying their employees about 10% of the salary paid by the foreign company is a violation of the international laws on forced and slave labor. The theory was tested in a case where three Cuban men forced to work 16-hour shifts at 3 ½ cents an hour repairing ships for a Cuban joint venture in Curacao won an $80 million judgment in a U.S. federal court in Miami. As more companies who do business in Cuba, also do business in the US, they will become open to claims of their Cuban workers.
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