U.S. Department
of Justice
Completed Programs - Cuba
PROGRAM OVERVIEW
| Number of Claims | 8821 |
| Number of Awards | 5913 |
| Amount of Awards - Principal | $1,902,202,284.95 |
| Amount of Fund | $0 |
| Amount of Payment | The United States has not settled these claims with Cuba |
First Program - Title V of the International Claims Settlement Act of 1949, as amended (the Act) authorized the Commission to consider claims of nationals of the United States against the Government of Cuba, based upon: (1) losses resulting from the nationalization, expropriation, intervention, or other taking of, or special measures directed against, property by that government; and (2) the disability or death of nationals of the United States resulting from actions taken by or under the authority of that government. The program covered claims for losses which occurred on or after January 1, 1959, when the Castro regime took power. Ordinarily, the Commission would have held that its jurisdiction extended only to claims arising before October 16, 1964, the date the program was authorized. In this case, however, the Commission reasoned that, because the statute was remedial, and because it had as one of its main purposes the collection, examination and preparation of evidence and information relating to the claims while it was still fresh and available, it would adjudicate any otherwise valid claim even if it arose after the filing deadline of January 1, 1967.
When the program was authorized, there were no funds available with which to make payment on the claims, and the statute precluded Congress’ appropriation of funds for such payments. As was the case with the First China Program, the statute provided only for the determination of the validity and amounts of such claims, and for the certification of the Commission’s findings to the Secretary of State for use in the future negotiation of a claims settlement agreement with the Government of Cuba. The Cuban Claims Program was completed on July 6, 1972. The Commission adjudicated a total of 8,816 claims in the program, of which it found 5,911 to be compensable. The adjudicated total principal value of those claims was $1,851,057,358.00.
Second Program - By letter dated July 15, 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice requested that the Commission conduct a Second Cuban Claims Program. As specified in the Secretary’s letter, the purpose of the program was to effect the adjudication and certification by the Commission of claims for uncompensated taking of United States nationals’ property by the Cuban government that arose after May 1, 1967, and were not adjudicated in the Commission’s original Cuban Claims Program, described above. The Commission published notice of the commencement of the claims program in the Federal Register on August 11, 2005 (70 F.R. 46890), in accordance with its usual procedures, and set a filing period of six months and a program length of twelve months, as specified in the Secretary’s letter. The notice announced that the filing deadline was February 13, 2006, and that the program would end on August 11, 2006.
During the six-month filing period, the Commission received a total of five claims, and denied three of them because they failed to meet the criteria set out in the Secretary of State’s referral letter. The other two claims did meet those criteria, and after careful review the Commission issued Proposed Decisions certifying the two claims as valid in the total principal amounts of $51,128,926.95 and $16,000.00, respectively. Neither of the claimants objected to these Proposed Decisions, and they were accordingly entered as final. After the program’s end in August 2006, the Commission certified these two claims to the Secretary of State, for eventual use in negotiation of a lump-sum claims settlement agreement with the Cuban government.
STATUTORY AUTHORITY
First Program – Pub. L. 88-666; (22 U.S.C. 1643)
Second Program – Pub. L. 105-277; (22 U.S.C. 1623); Referral Letter from the Secretary of State dated July 15, 2005
COMMISSION DECISIONS
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