Law firm wins malpractice case over Cuba sales

[Mika]

Yet another example of the extra territorial reach of the US embargo on Cuba.


Law firm wins malpractice case over Cuba sales
http://www.caribbeannetnews.com/news-5768--43-43--.html

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius won a legal malpractice case brought by a client that accused the largest Philadelphia-based law firm of giving bad advice about sales to Cuba in violation of the US trade embargo.

A 12-member jury deliberated for 3½ hours before concluding that Morgan Lewis hadn't committed malpractice. The unanimous verdict came after a 3-week trial in Philadelphia.

"We are very pleased that the members of the jury unanimously recognized that Morgan Lewis acted appropriately and breached no duty to the firm's former client," Morgan Lewis general counsel Michael Bloom said.

Dan and Stefan Brodie, founders of Purolite Corp., a maker of specialty resins for water purifiers, sued Morgan Lewis in 2004, claiming the firm advised them that their Canadian and UK units could legally sell to a Cuban company under the trade embargo if US operations weren't involved. The Brodies said Morgan Lewis attorneys continued to offer that advice after the US Attorney's office in Philadelphia began a criminal probe.

"We're disappointed with the verdict," Purolite attorney Aaron Marks said. The company is considering an appeal, he said.

During the trial, a lawyer for Morgan Lewis, William O'Brien, told jurors that the firm advised Purolite there couldn't be any US involvement in its sales to Cuba and that the Brodies ignored that advice. Purolite made more than 35 sales, totaling $2.12 million, O'Brien said.

"They did exactly what the lawyers told them not to do," O'Brien said yesterday, during his closing argument.

In 1996, the US Customs Service began an investigation into Purolite's sales to Cuba. Morgan Lewis told inspectors that the company's foreign units were separately owned and advised the Brodies to continue doing deals with a Cuban company, leading to a criminal indictment by the Philadelphia US Attorney's office, Marc Kasowitz, a lawyer for Purolite, told jurors.

The Brodies ordered their units to stop sales to Cuba in 1999, against the advice of Morgan Lewis, according to Kasowitz.

In 2002, the Brodies were convicted of making illegal trades to Cuba, a jury verdict that was later reversed on appeal. The Brodies and Purolite pleaded guilty to charges involving reimbursement of travel expenses related to Cuban sales, the company said in court filings.

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[Judi Lynn]

1. What IS it with U.S. persecution of people trying to sell water purification equipment to Cuba?

Cuba absolutely has to have these materials for so many medical procedures. This is fiendish, isn't it?

No doubt you will long remember the horrendous ordeal the U.S. government put Canadian citizen, James Zabzali through when they were able to try him for selling water purification equipment to Cuba, as well. I believe I have read his legal costs actually bankrupted him long ago::

By the BBC's Mike Fox in Montreal

A US court has convicted a Canadian national of breaking the 40-year old American trade embargo against Cuba, in one of the first cases of its kind.

The man, James Sabzali, and two American company executives were found guilty of trading with an enemy of the United States by selling water purification chemicals to Cuba.

Prosecutors said the three men conspired to use foreign subsidiaries to channel American products to Cuba.

Mr Sabzali faces a maximum sentence of more than 200 years in jail although prosecutors have recommended less than five. He is to be sentenced on 28 June.

Criticism from Canada

The Canadian government has criticised the United States over the charges filed against Mr Sabzali, saying it was trying to impose US law outside its own borders.

Mr Sabzali is believed to be the first foreign national to be tried and found guilty of violating the act.

As he left the court, James Sabzali said he was shocked and confused by the verdict. He was found guilty on 20 charges and another count of conspiracy.

The case has caused some controversy in Canada, where the government has objected to the charges, saying that the United States was trying to enforce its laws outside its borders.

Canadian media have accused the United States of undermining Canadian sovereignty.

More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1910284.stm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Final US attack on Canadian businessman crumbles - Sabzali 'finally free'


Stubborn resistance and world support ends eight-year, eight million dollar ordeal


By STEVE ECKARDT*


PHILADELPHIA (11 April 2005) -- EIGHT YEARS of battle over a key embargo issue came to a close early this year as the US government quietly withdrew its final attack on Canadian businessman James Sabzali, an effort to deport him from his adopted home in the United States. Washington had pursued deportation despite an earlier plea agreement with Sabzali. "The government reneged on its offer," he explained in an interview.

But now deportation has joined the original 76 charges filed against Sabzali in the rubble that was once Washington's largest prosecution for violation of its anti-Cuba embargo. Sabzali had faced life imprisonment and over $19 million USD in fines for sales of water purification supplies to Cuban hospitals. And while both the charges and their scale captured attention, the stakes were even more compelling: could the United States make its blockade legally binding on the entire world?

Key was Sabzali's being a Canadian citizen conducting business inside Canada for the majority of his alleged violations of the US Trading with the Enemy Act. What's more, the Canadian Extraterritorial Measures Act simultaneously prohibited him from cooperating with the US embargo.

And so the issue seemed simply posed: whose laws were paramount in Canada -- Ottawa's or Washington? Could the United States override law inside another sovereign nation?
(snip)

In fact, even the issues in his own case are not entirely resolved. Sabzali's single guilty plea was for a 1994 transaction carried out while he was an independent businessman living in Canada. This establishes, said the US prosecutor Joseph Poluka in an interview, that "you're not allowed to violate the laws of this country just because you live outside it."

More:
http://www.shunpiking.com/ol0206/0206-nl-se-usattack.htm

~~~~ ~~~~

Sabzali: Mistrial

"Good news, but not great news."
- James Sabzali

Canadian James Sabzali is walking around a 'freer' man than he was a day earlier. A Federal judge in the United States has declared a mistrial, overturning a guilty verdict on charges he violated the U.S. economic embargo of Cuba. For over a year, Sabzali has been forced to wear an electronic ankle bracelet that monitored his whereabouts. It has now been removed.

Citing 'prosecutorial misconduct,' Justice Mary McLaughlin expressed concern about the behaviour and language used by Federal prosecutor Joseph Poluka. Sabzali was more direct: "When you have to start fabricating evidence and lying to secure a conviction, it shows something is wrong."

He's not off the hook yet, however, as the U.S. Attorney's office is considering an appeal of McLaughlin's ruling, or may attempt another trial on 76 indictments not covered by the ruling.

Sabzali's alleged crime was in the selling of water purification products to Cuban hospitals. The case gained so much attention because roughly half of the "offenses" were alleged to have occurred while he was living in his Ontario home, working as a private businessman.

His business dealings with Cuba on behalf of a U.S. firm were in fact following the letter of Canadian law, which amended the Foreign Extraterritorial Measures Act (FEMA) in 1996 to counter the far-reaching claws of the U.S. Helms-Burton Act.

Sabzali and his family are still under sanction, however. The U.S. government has seized the deed to his house and the passports of he and his wife.

More:
http://www.canadiannetworkoncuba.ca/Documents/Sabzali-mistrial.shtml

They got a trifecta: hitting a Canadian, a man of Islamic ancestry, and someone doing business with Cuba all at the same time!

[Mika]

2. Because of their love of Cubans in Cuba they've pushed for laws that make life harder in Cuba.

Oh, and, yeah. The way to push harder for 'US approved democracy™" is to make Cubans thirsty. :crazy:

Go figure.

[Judi Lynn]

3. I recall reading that Dengue Fever was completely foreign to Cuba before

sometime in the 1960's, and that Eduardo Arocena testified in New York in his murder trial that he had brought in vials of biological warfare material for the CIA which they used against Cubans.

Cuba has had a continual struggle with that disease ever since that time, too, although it quickly got on top of it, once it had studied it closely.

The ability to treat water is more important there than in a lot of places.

Also, purified water is absolutely required for dialysis machines. Having access to dependable water purifiers is a life-saving necessity, and trying to intercept sales of water purification equipment to Cuba is truly sinister, especially when they start going after citizens IN OTHER COUNTRIES for trading with Cuba. That's so sick, isn't it? To get sicker than that you'd have to TORTURE people directly.

[Mika]

4. Dialysis patients who can't get treatment are being directly tortured.

Plus, critical to treatment for dengue hemorrhagic fever is clean water intake.

Americans, in general, have little idea that the sanctions placed on Cuba in their name are expanding as corporate consolidation (freedom in Bushspeak) is ever more global.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Absolutely right. Constantly expanding, choking off what resources they've got left.

In the earlier days, they still had massive problems getting medical equipment, as so many machines, although made in other countries, contained components registered, or otherwise originating in the U.S., which would keep the entire machine, as in x-ray machines, and cancer treatment machines, etc. from being purchased for Cuban medical purposes.

Here's a report which was issued in 1997. It all relates still, unfortunately, with a few minor changes as in 2000, due to an act of Congress Cuba was able to buy a few kinds of food, due to the fact their reserves had been wiped out by Hurricane Michelle.

"Denial of Food and Medicine:
The Impact Of The U.S. Embargo
On The Health And Nutrition In Cuba"
-An Executive Summary-
American Association for World Health Report
Summary of Findings
March 1997

After a year-long investigation, the American Association for World Health has determined that the U.S. embargo of Cuba has dramatically harmed the health and nutrition of large numbers of ordinary Cuban citizens. As documented by the attached report, it is our expert medical opinion that the U.S. embargo has caused a significant rise in suffering-and even deaths-in Cuba. For several decades the U.S. embargo has imposed significant financial burdens on the Cuban health care system. But since 1992 the number of unmet medical needs patients going without essential drugs or doctors performing medical procedures without adequate equipment-has sharply accelerated. This trend is directly linked to the fact that in 1992 the U.S. trade embargo-one of the most stringent embargoes of its kind, prohibiting the sale of food and sharply restricting the sale of medicines and medical equipment-was further tightened by the 1992 Cuban Democracy Act.

A humanitarian catastrophe has been averted only because the Cuban government has maintained a high level of budgetary support for a health care system designed to deliver primary and preventive health care to all of its citizens. Cuba still has an infant mortality rate half that of the city of Washington, D.C.. Even so, the U.S. embargo of food and the de facto embargo on medical supplies has wreaked havoc with the island's model primary health care system. The crisis has been compounded by the country's generally weak economic resources and by the loss of trade with the Soviet bloc.

Recently four factors have dangerously exacerbated the human effects of this 37-year-old trade embargo. All four factors stem from little-understood provisions of the U.S. Congress' 1992 Cuban Democracy Act (CDA):

• A Ban on Subsidiary Trade: Beginning in 1992, the Cuban Democracy Act imposed a ban on subsidiary trade with Cuba. This ban has severely constrained Cuba's ability to import medicines and medical supplies from third country sources. Moreover, recent corporate buyouts and mergers between major U.S. and European pharmaceutical companies have further reduced the number of companies permitted to do business with Cuba.
  
  
• Licensing Under the Cuban Democracy Act: The U.S. Treasury and Commerce Departments are allowed in principle to license individual sales of medicines and medical supplies, ostensibly for humanitarian reasons to mitigate the embargo's impact on health care delivery. In practice, according to U.S. corporate executives, the licensing provisions are so arduous as to have had the opposite effect. As implemented, the licensing provisions actively discourage any medical commerce. The number of such licenses granted-or even applied for since 1992-is minuscule. Numerous licenses for medical equipment and medicines have been denied on the grounds that these exports "would be detrimental to U.S. foreign policy interests."
  
  
• Shipping Since 1992:The embargo has prohibited ships from loading or unloading cargo in U.S. ports for 180 days after delivering cargo to Cuba. This provision has strongly discouraged shippers from delivering medical equipment to Cuba. Consequently shipping costs have risen dramatically and further constricted the flow of food, medicines, medical supplies and even gasoline for ambulances. From 1993 to 1996, Cuban companies spent an additional $8.7 million on shipping medical imports from Asia, Europe and South America rather than from the neighboring United States.
  
  
• Humanitarian Aid: Charity is an inadequate alternative to free trade in medicines, medical supplies and food. Donations from U.S. non-governmental organizations and international agencies do not begin to compensate for the hardships inflicted by the embargo on the Cuban public health system. In any case, delays in licensing and other restrictions have severely discouraged charitable contributions from the U.S.

Taken together, these four factors have placed severe strains on the Cuban health system. The declining availability of food stuffs, medicines and such basic medical supplies as replacement parts for thirty-year-old X-ray machines is taking a tragic human toll. The embargo has closed so many windows that in some instances Cuban physicians have found it impossible to obtain life-saving medicines from any source, under any circumstances. Patients have died. In general, a relatively sophisticated and comprehensive public health system is being systematically stripped of essential resources. High-technology hospital wards devoted to cardiology and nephrology are particularly under siege. But so too are such basic aspects of the health system as water quality and food security. Specifically, the AAWH's team of nine medical experts identified the following health problems affected by the embargo:

• Malnutrition: The outright ban on the sale of American foodstuffs has contributed to serious nutritional deficits, particularly among pregnant women, leading to an increase in low birth-weight babies. In addition, food shortages were linked to a devastating outbreak of neuropathy numbering in the tens of thousands. By one estimate, daily caloric intake dropped 33 percent between 1989 and 1993.
  
  
• Water Quality: The embargo is severely restricting Cuba's access to water treatment chemicals and spare-parts for the island's water supply system. This has led to serious cutbacks in supplies of safe drinking water, which in turn has become a factor in the rising incidence of morbidity and mortality rates from water-borne diseases.
  
  
• Medicines & Equipment: Of the 1,297 medications available in Cuba in 1991, physicians now have access to only 889 of these same medicines - and many of these are available only intermittently. Because most major new drugs are developed by U.S. pharmaceuticals, Cuban physicians have access to less than 50 percent of the new medicines available on the world market. Due to the direct or indirect effects of the embargo, the most routine medical supplies are in short supply or entirely absent from some Cuban clinics.
  
  
• Medical Information: Though information materials have been exempt from the U.S. trade embargo since 1 988, the AAWH study concludes that in practice very little such information goes into Cuba or comes out of the island due to travel restrictions, currency regulations and shipping difficulties. Scientists and citizens of both countries suffer as a result. Paradoxically, the embargo harms some U.S. citizens by denying them access to the latest advances in Cuban medical research, including such products as Meningitis B vaccine, cheaply produced interferon and streptokinase, and an AIDS vaccine currently under-going clinical trials with human volunteers.

Finally, the AAWH wishes to emphasize the stringent nature of the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. Few other embargoes in recent history - including those targeting Iran, Libya, South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, Chile or Iraq - have included an outright ban on the sale of food. Few other embargoes have so restricted medical commerce as to deny the availability of life-saving medicines to ordinary citizens. Such an embargo appears to violate the most basic international charters and conventions governing human rights, including the United Nations charter, the charter of the Organization of American States, and the articles of the Geneva Convention governing the treatment of civilians during wartime.

American Association for World Health
1825 K Street, NW, Suite 1208
Washington, DC 20006
Tel. [phone] / FAX [phone]
Email: [e-mail]

http://www.cubasolidarity.net/aawh.html

[Mika]

6. Thanks for all the great links, Judi.

I remember reading somewhere that Mastec and church&tower were seeking out medical and communications equipment suppliers to purchase just so they would be off limits to Cuba. I'm pretty sure I have the bookmark to that info on my old Mac. I'll have to dust it off and check.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Good grief! Well, that would be the next perverted step to people hell bent on destroying Cuba,

who've got the resources.

Looks as if they hope to override the will of Cuban citizens, to wipe them off the face of the map so they can go back, seize control of the physical space, and start up making new fortunes again, and turning it right back into the "Whorehouse of the Caribbean," just like the good old days.

It just might become the new Orange County of the Carribean, or NEW MIAMI.

If the younger Mas doesn't have better business sense than his dad, he'll eventually run the businesses into the ground. I've read about their blazing disasters in Madrid and in South America.

When they finally stripped the Madrid company of all its wealth, and bankrupted it, the white collar workers there set up a tent city outside the building, in protest and refused to leave. They stayed there, having their meals, sleeping for ages, as their families came and went, visiting them, bringing them clean clothes, etc.

Did you ever hear anything about Jorge Mas Canosa getting set up in front businesses for the CIA? I think I've heard something about that, that, in other words, the fact he became a multi-multi-multi-millionaire has everything to do with the package of financial boosts he got from the U.S. Goverment in the beginning, at the great expense of the U.S. taxpayers.

Would NOT be surprised to learn they have been plotting to do great harm to Cuba through new business maneuvers. Any means possible will be the means they'll use, just as in the past.