Frozen Cuban Assets Are Target of Suits

MIAMI -- The day a judge awarded her family $400 million in damages for Cuba's execution by firing squad of her brother, Jeannette Hausler said his death had been vindicated. "We have found justice," she said.

But now comes the hard part for Hausler and other family members of Robert Fuller, a U.S. citizen who owned a plantation in Cuba and was tortured and killed on Oct. 16, 1960. They will try to identify Cuban assets frozen in U.S. bank accounts in an effort to collect any money after the Dec. 14 court ruling.

"How much there is is not clear. The banks are very coy about telling you how much is there, because they don't want to get sued by the Cuban government," said Alfonso Perez, one of the Fuller family's attorneys. "Are we going to try to get some of those assets? Absolutely."

Fidel Castro's serious illness raises another possibility: after his death, Cuba might seek normalized trade and diplomatic relations with the United States, opening an avenue for the Fuller family and others who have won judgments against Cuba to get their money directly from Havana. Castro temporarily relinquished power to his brother, Raul, in July.

"If Cuba wants to be part of the world economic community, if they want to have investments in the U.S. or have U.S. companies invest, I think they are going to have to deal with these judgments one way or another," said Joseph DeMaria, who represents families of two other men killed by the Castro government in 1961.

DeMaria was part of a legal team that in 2006 persuaded a federal judge in New York to order payment of $91 million from frozen Cuban accounts held by JP Morgan Chase Bank to families of two men who died after the failed, CIA-backed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961.

The money came from accounts frozen originally during the Kennedy administration, including one containing Cuban payments made to AT&T. The payouts were made to the families of Howard F. Anderson, who was executed for smuggling arms into Cuba, and Thomas "Pete" Ray, a CIA pilot who was shot down during the Bay of Pigs operation.

Both families had won lawsuits against Cuba in Miami-Dade County Circuit Court. In both cases, Cuba did not answer the allegations in the lawsuits or defend itself, which is its common practice whenever the Castro government is sued in the United States.

The cases wound up before a New York federal judge because OfficeMax, through a merger with another U.S. company, asserted property claims for the Cuban Electric Co. that was confiscated by Cuba in the 1960s. OfficeMax raised questions about the validity of the Miami judgments and argued that the money should cover its claims first.

Last week, Cuba's foreign ministry issued a statement through state-run newspapers accusing the United States of robbing the Havana government of its assets and saying it does not recognize the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. The statement said the assets wrongly went to "terrorist groups or families of U.S. citizens involved in aggressions against our country."

The families took advantage of a 1996 U.S. law that allowed victims of terrorist groups or countries like Cuba that are designated as state sponsors of terrorism to sue for damages.

The same law was used by the families of three Cuban exiles who flew Brothers to the Rescue planes that were shot down by Cuban MIG fighters in 1996 to collect $93 million from the frozen assets in 2001. That represented about half of the $187 million damage award for the Miami-based group, which flew over the Straits of Florida searching for Cuban rafters and other migrants.