Since this board is apparantly full of both americans and scandinavians, I figured I could get an explanation, or opinions here. I was unable to find an english-language link, but here is a scandinavian one: http://www.berlingske.dk/udland/artikel:aid=845306/
Maybe someone with better google-skills can help me?
The case: the hotel-chain Scandic Hotels, most of which are in Scandinavia (hence the name) were recently bought by Hilton hotels, and are therefore now an american firm.
Which means that suddenly, cuban nationals are no longer allowed in a Scandic Hotel. Even people with year-old reservations were turned away at the door.
This is agains norwegian law. However, Scandic hotels in Norway apparantly claim that, since they are an american firm, they should be subject to american law, and not norwegian law, even though the hotel the incident took place in, is in Norway.
I wasn’t able to form a coherent argument to post this in any other forum, so here it goes. I personally think Scandic Hotels should opologize to the people affected, stopp acting crazy, or be shutt down. This sort of thing is not acceptable. Follow the laws of the country you are in, or take your buisiness elsewere.
Hilton shouldn’t have bought a company which had a legal obligation to maintain business relations with Cuban nationals, if Hilton’s claim that the embargo on Cubanness extends to Cubans staying in hotels in Scandinavia.
This, however, is not necessarily something your typical mergers & acquisitions team would consider. Maybe if the hotels were in Bermuda, it might be on their radar…
I don’t know much about the reversed topic of services from American businesses being used by Cubans so I Googled “Coca Cola” and “Cuba” to see if the most popular product in the world is banned from the nation. I found this link (entitled “Trading with the Enemy”) which explained that Coca Cola sold in Cuba comes from the Coca Cola company of Mexico. Hm, wow, didn’t know that.
Now, hypothetically, let’s say that another U.S. based business (non-franchise owned) in Europe was to, say, sell a can of soup to a Cuban who used a credit card. The cashier asks for ID to verify that the card belongs to the customer. The Cuban produces a Cuban passport as ID.
If the cashier was to allow the transaction would they end up breaking rocks into pebbles for the rest of their life (tongue in cheek, should anyone think I’m serious) should the financial statement link to a Cuban bank?
An English link to the story. Pretty much the only thing not mentioned here already is that the Norwegian Union of Municipal and General Employees is boycotting their Norwegian locations.
Why can’t American companies make business with Cuban nationals (not the Cuban government) outside Cuba? That is just… (undecided between “crazy” and “stupid”.
Actually , it does mention something else. It mentions a “Cuban delegation”. According to this http://www.thelocal.se/5990/20070104/ , a spokeswoman for Scandic said
If you listen to the Treasury Department, an American citizen who uses Cuban sugar in his coffee in a cafe in Vancouver has violated the embargo and committed a crime.
Yes, that’s right, the Treasury Department “clarified” the embargo policy to say that anyone subject to U.S. jurisdiction who consumes Cuban goods, even outside the bounds of the United States, has violated the embargo and is a federal criminal.
I don’t believe that it’s likely that anyone would be prosecuted because he used Cubas sugar – probably without even knowing its origin. But I can envision a scenario where the Treasury Department decided to adopt a get-tough policy and sent agents to cigar shops to catch Americans buying the illicit cigar if they wanted to make a point. All it would take would to have an agent checking llicense plates. If he sees a car with a Washington plate park in front of a cigar shop, and the driver gets out and goes into the shop, then the agent could go in and witness the transaction. The buyer could then be arrested once he was back in the U.S.
Question: Since Cuban cigars are not illegal in Canada, could the cigar buyer claim political asylum since he was not doing anything wrong under Canadian law and move to Canada?
He could try. He would most likely fail. Your government just isn’t repressive enough to impress Canadian immigration officials, it seems, as the only US citizens they’ve granted refugee status to recently have been children of refugees from other places who were born while their parents were in the US awaiting various immigration proceedings. You need to work on your civil rights abuses more if you want us to grant you asylum.
On preview, I see that Gorsnak has addressed the asylum question, but I’ll advance another possibility…
There is always the possibility that since the T-Man is on the job and thus working in Canada, and probably didn’t inform the Canadian authorities, he would be working here illegally. Even if he did tell the Customs and Immigration people on his way into Canada the real reason for his visit, he would be turned away for not having a working visa (assuming he did not have one, which he probably wouldn’t). In either case, he could then be deported by Canadian authorities, possibly before he had the chance to do anything to Americans visiting Canada.
But I would imagine that the Treasury Department has far better–and less costly to the American taxpayer–things to do than to stake out a cigar shop in a foreign country. Besides, as far as business people go anyway, all my Cuban cigar-loving American business associates would rent cars when they were up in Canada on business. Sure that car may have been rented to an American inside the cigar shop–but the license plate would be local.