The U.S. Department of the Treasury announced this Thursday the imposition of sanctions on the International Trade Bank (BICSA), based in Cuba, a decision that the entity and the authorities of the island interpret as a sign of Washington's "criminal effort" to "punish" the Caribbean country.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has added BICSA to its list of banned entities, considering that this financial entity based in Havana would have "provided services" to the Karafin Bank, of Iranian origin and already sanctioned by Washington since 2020, at least since 2022.
The State Department, in disseminating these measures, has specified that the sanctions are also directed against BICSA "for operating or having operated in the financial services sector of the Cuban economy."
In the same vein, the U.S. Administration has emphasized its stance by stating: "Let me be clear: the Trump Administration will not tolerate a rogue state hosting military, intelligence, and terrorist operations hostile to within a hundred miles of U.S. territory. We will continue to vigorously identify and eliminate the financial and security interconnections of the Cuban regime with Iran and other dangerous and hostile states and actors," assured Marco Rubio's office.
From Havana, the Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, has reacted on social media to this "new aggressive measure," emphasizing that BICSA is "an absolutely legitimate bank and whose transactions in Cuba and around the world are also absolutely legitimate."
The Cuban chancellor has denounced that these sanctions constitute "a demonstration of the criminal effort to maximize collective punishment against the people of Cuba and 'close every valve' to the Cuban economy."