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In a development that could cost Donald Trump crucial Cuban-American votes, his casino company once violated the U.S. embargo of Cuba by secretly funding a business foray on the communist island, Newsweek reported this morning.
Trump’s casino company "funneled" money in late 1998 to a consulting firm that traveled to the island in search of business opportunities on Trump's behalf. The consultant then billed Trump’s company and instructed employees on how to make it look as if the money had been connected to a Catholic charity.
If Trump secretly spent U.S. money in Cuba during a visit that was not licensed by the U.S. government or fully hosted by a non-U.S. entity or charity, he violated the Cuban embargo, which was designed to starve the Castro regime of American currency.
Trump’s campaign has not commented since Wednesday night, when the allegations first surfaced.
“The article makes some very serious and troubling allegations,” Marco Rubio, a pro-embargo anti-Castro hardliner, said in a written statement. “I will reserve judgment until we know all the facts and Donald has been given the opportunity to respond.”
John Kavulich agreed with Rubio that the allegations are problematic. He said that emissaries from Trump’s organization approached him in the 1990s to discuss business opportunities in Cuba.
“We were approached by a Trump Organization senior executive who visited my office, and we have the correspondence in our file,” Kavulich said.
Trump Organization officials also visited the island in 2012 and 2013 exploring golf-course developments in Cuba.
Now that Trump is again espousing a hard line on Cuba publicly, the revelations of the multiple times his emissaries have quietly inquired about profiting from the Castro government – and violated the trade embargo that he supports – come at a difficult time for the GOP presidential nominee.
Trump recently began making a big push to curry the support of Cuban-Americans who live in Miami-Dade, Florida’s most populous county with the most Republicans, 366,000. About 72 percent of them are Hispanic, nearly all Cuban-American. They’re one of the only blocs of voters in the United States who still favor keeping the embargo and who oppose President Obama’s rapprochement with the Castro government.
http://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2016/09/report-trump-violated-cuba-embargo-105927#ixzz4LfXLfvaK