The inclusion of the Orbit regime’s financial institution on the US blacklist prevents transactions with the Island
14ymedio, Havana/Miami, 7 February 2025 — The foreseeable brake of the Trump Administration on Western Union (WU) operations in Cuba is now active. The American company suspended the sending of remittances to the Island on Wednesday, February 5, alleging growing “limitations by the US Government” that have made it impossible to maintain the service.
“They have not told us if it will be final, but at the moment we cannot carry out transactions with Cuba,” a WU worker in Miami told 14ymedio. This newspaper contacted three other offices in Florida, which have confirmed the information. At the moment, the company has not issued any official statement.
The company’s website, from which remittances to the Island could be sent – and which arrive in pesos – indicated “problems” when trying to perform an operation and was told to “try again later.” Another employee of the company explained to this newspaper that it was the recipient country that caused the problem: “They have already removed the service,” she said, “and aren’t even coming into the office. Since February 5, remittances have been suspended.”
A third person offered a supposedly technical explanation and claimed that the problem was affecting the whole company: the page is “blocked. We can’t access it with our password.” Finally, another worker, who serves customers in English and was less informed about the situation in Cuba, said she was unaware of the problem: “There is nothing wrong with our system.”
A third person offered a supposedly technical explanation and claimed that the problem was affecting the whole company
The interruption of the transfer of money through WU was predictable once Trump took office. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reinstated and expanded on February 1 the Restricted List of Cuba, which forbids transactions with companies controlled by the Cuban Armed Forces and Cuban counterintelligence.
In his statement, Rubio said that the “black list” was re-implemented “to deny resources to the same branches of the Cuban regime that directly oppress and monitor the Cuban people while controlling large sectors of the country’s economy.” He also added Orbit, the remittance processing company whose links to the Cuban Armed Forces have been documented by the press.
In 2022, the Central Bank of Cuba gave Orbit the authority to manage remittances sent through Western Union and other platforms.
Orbit, under the jurisdiction of Cimex Financial, which is controlled by the military conglomerate Gaesa, also manages the money that enters the country through other platforms such as VaCuba and Cubamax.
In May of last year, and after resuming remittances – suspended for two years – WU sealed an alliance with Katapulk, the virtual shopping site of Cuban-American tycoon Hugo Cancio. A supporter of rapprochement with the regime and one of its financial allies in Florida, Cancio announced “an additional channel to send money, using the Western Union platform.”
According to the president of WU for North America and Latin America, Rodrigo García Estebarena, the company’s service provides a “crucial connection between those who live in the United States and their families in Cuba.”
For many Cubans in exile, remittances have done nothing but give oxygen to the regime by supplying it with the foreign currencies it so desires
For many voices of the Cuban exile, such as that of Republican congresswoman María Elvira Salazar, remittances have done no more than oxygenate the Cuban regime with the foreign currencies that it needs to stay afloat in the midst of one of the most severe crises that the country has experienced.
Last December, Cuba Siglo 21 reported that Gaesa has lost more than 95% of the market for remittances from the United States to the Island. According to the organization’s calculations for the income received through April 2024, the military conglomerate will receive 81.6 million dollars in remittances this year, just 4.13% of the total volume collected in 2023, 1.972 billion dollars. This is due, it alleges, to a “silent citizen financial rebellion against its banking monopoly,” which in practice implies that much of the money sent from abroad to the Island is channeled “through a network of more than 150 informal banks.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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