The US Supreme Court docket Is Quietly Aiding an Financial Warfare on Cuba

As President Donald Trump gestures in direction of regime change in Cuba, the U.S. Supreme Court docket, with Trump’s urging, has agreed to listen to lawsuits that would assist company pursuits recoup lots of of tens of millions of {dollars} in long-expropriated Cuban property if the US seizes management of the nation.

A type of lawsuits includes an oil big claiming damages from Cuban corporations for decades-old revolutionary asset seizures. The opposite, which one of many plaintiffs calls an important Supreme Court docket case on Cuba “prior to now sixty years,” includes the scion of a fascist-friendly company empire who’s taken credit score for Trump’s hardline stance on Cuba and is looking for compensation for a 122-year-old expired pier contract.

Collectively, they construct on long-dormant anti-Cuban overseas coverage weaponized by Trump and push the court docket to increase U.S. regulation past its borders to retroactively punish a overseas revolution — and ship the spoils to profiteers.

“The Supreme Court docket is doing about seventy instances a yr,” Robert Muse, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer who has lengthy centered on Cuban authorized issues, instructed The Lever. “The truth that it could dedicate two locations on the docket to litigation arising underneath a statute that’s solely produced about 50 instances in whole — and the place there’s no circuit break up — is extraordinary.”

Over the previous yr, the Trump administration has ratcheted up ways to ship regime change in Cuba, which has weathered a complete commerce embargo for six a long time and has been trapped in gas, vitality, drugs, and overseas alternate crises for the reason that onset of COVID-19 pandemic.

Then, inside hours of U.S. troops extracting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on Jan. 3, Donald Trump asserted that “Cuba is able to fall” as a result of Cuba will get “all of their revenue” from Venezuelan oil. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a distinguished Cuban-American politician, quickly echoed the warning, telling the Cuban authorities that it “ought to be involved.” The next week, Trump doubled down on his threats, warning the Cuban authorities to “make a deal earlier than it’s too late.”

Amid this backdrop, the Supreme Court docket will hear arguments for Exxon Mobil Corp. v. Corporación Cimex, S.A. and Havana Docks Company v. Royal Caribbean Cruises, Ltd. on Feb. 23. If the Supreme Court docket guidelines in favor of the company plaintiffs, it might create new avenues for personal actors to capitalize on regime change within the nation — and additional increase the vulture capitalism that’s already driving U.S. coverage in Latin America.

Throughout the area, company pursuits have been turning political crises into authorized clout. Hedge funds have for years extended austerity measures in Puerto Rico by pressuring the U.S. territory’s authorities to pay distressed money owed in full. Extra just lately, vitality corporations positioned themselves to revenue from Trump’s Venezuelan regime change.

Codifying Retaliation

After former Cuban President Fidel Castro’s anti-imperialist Cuban Revolution deposed U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, U.S.-Cuba relations rapidly deteriorated. The next yr, Castro licensed Regulation 851, permitting the Cuban authorities to expropriate U.S.-owned or managed property.

Then, in 1962, the U.S. imposed a full commerce embargo on Cuba, following Deputy Assistant Secretary Lester Mallory’s suggestion three years earlier to disclaim “cash and provides to Cuba, to lower financial and actual wages, to result in starvation, desperation, and overthrow of the federal government.”

In 1996, Congress hardened the embargo by passing the Helms-Burton Act, which prolonged the ban past U.S. borders. By threatening authorized motion towards each U.S. and non-U.S. companies for conducting enterprise in Cuba, the Helms-Burton Act explicitly sought to expedite the collapse of the Cuban authorities by discouraging overseas enterprise funding in Cuba.

One part of the Helms-Burton Act, Title III, created a personal proper of motion that allowed “U.S. nationals” to file swimsuit towards any U.S. or overseas entity that “traffics” in property expropriated by the Cuban authorities. Each the drafters of the Helms-Burton Act and Cuban-American hardliners have argued that Title III is critical as a result of it gives a method for Cuban-Individuals to obtain compensation for property that the Cuban authorities has seized and earnings from.

Nevertheless, the Cuban authorities has already settled many revolution-era money owed with out the specter of authorized motion. It has negotiated settlements for nationalized properties with Canada, Nice Britain, France, Spain, and Switzerland. The Cuban authorities initially agreed to compensate U.S. property house owners by way of proceeds from its longstanding U.S. sugar export deal, however the matter was left at an deadlock after the U.S. ended the commerce association in 1961.

Shortly after former President Invoice Clinton signed the Helms-Burton Act, the European Union threatened to problem the regulation earlier than the World Commerce Group as a result of it could permit the U.S. to manage non-U.S. corporations working elsewhere. Clinton agreed to droop Title III of the regulation for six months, and the EU dropped its case. For greater than 20 years, each president since has suspended Title III in six-month phrases, recognizing that its activation would pressure its diplomatic relations with allies.

That restraint ended throughout Donald Trump’s first time period when the administration activated Title III in April 2019. The transfer opened the floodgates for longstanding grievances to develop into lawsuits. Roughly 40 fits have been filed within the first two years of Title III’s activation towards Cuban, American, and European corporations — however up to now, most have had little impact.

“Title III has been operative for six years” Muse defined, “and no one has acquired a judgment.” Lots of the lawsuits have been dismissed on procedural points, and most early judgments and the one jury verdict award in favor of plaintiffs have been overturned.

However now, two of these lawsuits have reached the Supreme Court docket.

Exxon and the Assault on Sovereign Immunity

A type of instances was filed by ExxonMobil towards two Cuban state companies: Union CubaPetroleo (CUPET) and Corporación CIMEX. Exxon Mobil argues that the businesses are responsible for the losses incurred by Cuba’s 1960 revolutionary expropriation of its service stations and oil refineries, which have been on the time owned by the oil big’s Panamanian subsidiary, Esso Commonplace Oil.

The 1976 International Sovereign Immunities Act — in addition to worldwide regulation — agrees that one nation can’t be sued within the courts of one other. So, for a plaintiff to proceed with a civil swimsuit towards a overseas state underneath the Helms-Burton Act, it could must qualify for an exception to the regulation. Final yr, the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit decided that Exxon didn’t fulfill the standards to qualify for any such exception.

Exxon then petitioned the Supreme Court docket to do one thing much more radical: strip Cuban authorities entities of their sovereignty altogether by arguing that Title III of the Helms-Burton Act does away with overseas sovereign immunity.

Final August, the Trump administration filed an amicus temporary within the case agreeing that the International Sovereign Immunities Act imposes undue burdens on plaintiffs and that Title III of the Helms-Burton Act alone ought to suffice. Sovereign immunity, within the eyes of Trump’s Solicitor Basic, seems to be an inconvenience standing in the best way of retribution.

In its temporary, the federal government insisted that it has “compelling” and “paramount” overseas coverage pursuits in guaranteeing that U.S. nationals obtain compensation, citing a January 2025 Trump memo titled “Restoring a Powerful U.S.-Cuba Coverage.” What it doesn’t clarify, although, is how the courts would implement any ensuing judgments towards the Cuban corporations concerned — until there’s a regime change.

“You’ve received your Helms-Burton judgment — the place are you going to execute it?” stated Muse. “There aren’t any Cuban property in the US to execute on.”

Havana Docks and the Fiction of Stolen Property

The identical day that the Supreme Court docket agreed to listen to the Exxon case, it additionally agreed to listen to Havana Docks Company’s lawsuit towards 4 U.S.-based cruise traces.

The Kentucky-based firm seeks $439 million from cruise ship operators Carnival, Royal Caribbean, MSC Cruises, and Norwegian for alleged damages incurred between 2016 and 2019, when President Barack Obama eliminated Cuba from a listing of nations deemed to have insufficient port safety to permit for U.S.-based cruises to cease there. Havana Docks argues that it holds a longstanding declare to a concession for a long-nationalized terminal and piers utilized by cruise operators throughout that point for passenger loading and unloading.

In 1904, Cuban President Tomás Estrada Palma granted Compañia del Puerto, a predecessor to Havana Docks Company, a public works concession to construct a pier on the state-owned San Francisco Wharf in Havana. In response to Decree 467, the concession was explicitly for public functions and just for cargo loading and unloading; regardless of Havana Dock’s present claims, Compañia del Puerto was by no means licensed to supply passenger companies on the pier. The preliminary time period of the lease was for 50 years starting in 1905; the lease was later prolonged to 99 years, with an expiration date of 2004.

The Cuban Regulation of Ports made clear that ports are public property and that the general public has a “basic proper to the usage of the littoral sea,” which incorporates the particular proper to embark and disembark passengers. In response to authorized knowledgeable Ambar Diaz, in a report created for the Supreme Court docket on the request of the cruise traces, Havana Docks’ rights have been all the time contingent on state possession, public rights, and a non-exclusive concession — which means that the corporate’s lease might at any time have been terminated, together with by expropriation, if the state decided that public wants required it.

Havana Docks is adamant, although, that its expired lease nonetheless qualifies as property that was expropriated by the Cuban authorities.

Behind Havana Docks Company’s litigation stands an in depth lobbying marketing campaign by Mickael Behn, a London-based inheritor to Worldwide Phone and Telegraph Company. The corporate turned a international telecommunications empire by the Thirties underneath Sosthenes Behn, who leveraged connections and cozied as much as officers from the Franco and Hitler regimes, and paid Cuban officers underneath Batista. In 1917, Sosthenes shaped Havana Docks Company and purchased the concession from Compañia del Puerto to function cargo loading and unloading on the Havana piers.

Now Mickael, Sosthenes’ grandson, alongside together with his two cousins in France, holds a majority of Havana Docks’ shares. A small group of shareholders, together with Warren Buffett, owns the remaining. Behn joined forces with Javier Garcia-Bengochea, a Cuban-American who claims to personal greater than 82 % of economic waterfront property that was utilized by cruise operators following Obama’s legalization of Cuban journey. Solely 32.5 % of Garcia-Bengochea’s curiosity was licensed by the Worldwide Claims Settlement Act — the remaining 50 % stake was by no means licensed.

In 2018, Behn and fellow Title III claimant Javier Garcia-Bengochea started to run a public smear marketing campaign to discourage American vacationers from taking cruises to Cuba, inserting billboards throughout Miami and operating radio advertisements to hyperlink the Cuban navy with U.S.-based cruise operators. Behn and his associates successfully ran the advert marketing campaign with the assistance of the Miami-based Cuban Democratic Directorate, a nongovernmental group that acquired greater than $3 million in U.S. federal grants to “promote freedom of knowledge” in Cuba.

Behn and Garcia-Bengochea not directly lobbied the primary Trump administration in 2018 to activate Title III of the Helms-Burton Act with the assistance of former U.S. diplomat Otto Reich (well-known for his position within the Iran-Contra scandal), former Nationwide Safety Advisor John Bolton, and D.C.-based lobbying agency Cormac Group. The lobbying agency scheduled “$10k coffees” for Behn and Garcia-Bengochea with then-Sen. Rubio and then-Gov. Rick Scott to request that Trump enforces Titles III and IV of the Helms-Burton Act.

On April 17, 2019, the Trump administration introduced the activation of Title III. Lower than two months later, the administration halted cruises to Cuba and ended the “people-to-people” visa class that allowed Americans to go to Cuba as vacationers.

Behn and Garcia-Bengochea have overtly credited their lobbying efforts to the profitable implementation of Title III and the next restrictive U.S. journey coverage to Cuba.

“We have been capable of muster our sources and convey them collectively and finally join with the Trump administration to get Title III enacted,” Garcia-Bengochea instructed the Miami New Occasions in 2023. “All people who has sued [under Title III] owes us. We did this for them, and so they realize it.”

Since 2000, Garcia-Bengochea has donated $25,400 to Marco Rubio’s political coffers and $18,600 to Florida Congressman Mario Díaz-Balart. Díaz-Balart, a Republican, filed an amicus curiae temporary in assist of Havana Docks in March 2025, arguing that U.S. overseas coverage is to “deliver democratic establishments to Cuba” by slicing off “onerous forex, oil, and productive funding and experience.”

In their very own Supreme Court docket temporary on the difficulty, the cruise traces and associated trade teams warned that accepting Havana Docks’ idea that expired, non-exclusive, public-purpose concessions might be transformed to indefinite property claims. They argue that this could expose corporations to probably large retroactive legal responsibility and would chill any future normalization coverage between the U.S. and Cuba.

“The sum-total of the Eleventh Circuit’s holding is that [Havana Docks Corporation]’s time-limited curiosity expired earlier than 2016,” the cruise traces famous. “That slender, factbound conclusion just isn’t the stuff of certiorari, not to mention of diplomatic crises.”

An Imperial Court docket in Ready

The Trump administration’s overseas coverage objectives, which align with Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s lifelong vendettas towards leftist governments in Latin America, significantly Venezuela and Cuba, have labored in tandem to drive the Title III lawsuits to the Supreme Court docket’s docket.

In each the Exxon and Havana Docks instances, U.S. Solicitor Basic D. John Sauer contends that an instantaneous evaluate of the Helms-Burton Act’s which means and scope as a “precedence for U.S. overseas coverage.”

Whereas that is the primary time a Helms-Burton Act Title III lawsuit has ever reached the Supreme Court docket, the Trump administration has interpreted the 1996 regulation squarely because it was supposed — to curtail overseas funding in Cuba as a result of it “undermines the overseas coverage of the US.” That overseas coverage is to result in regime change in Cuba.

It’s with good motive that the Cuban hardliner group can count on the U.S. Supreme Court docket to rule in favor of those lawsuits. Within the first yr of its second administration, Trump’s Solicitor Basic has been masterful at figuring out decrease court docket selections that the Supreme Court docket would seemingly reverse or keep in Trump’s favor; final yr, the Trump administration misplaced solely 5 of 26 instances on the Supreme Court docket’s emergency docket.

“Historical past teaches us that the courts are exceptionally deferential to the manager department within the space of overseas relations,” stated Muse. “If the U.S. authorities tells the court docket there’s a nationwide safety curiosity, the court docket just isn’t going to look at the premise for that declare.”

Since 1996, the first aim of the Helms-Burton Act has been to scare U.S. buyers away from Cuba in an effort to choke any provide of U.S. {dollars} to the island.

“Helms-Burton is a very weird statute,” says Robert Muse. “It doesn’t advance nationwide safety, it doesn’t compensate anybody, and it produces judgments with nowhere to implement them.”

Right this moment, nevertheless, there’s a very actual risk that authorized motion could possibly be taken towards U.S. corporations — on this case, cruise traces — to fulfill Trump’s regime-change ambitions and the avarice of company vultures.

This text was initially revealed by The Lever, an investigative newsroom. Should you like this story, join The Lever’s free e-newsletter.