Helms-Burton Act
A 1996 US statute whose Title III allows suits in US courts against anyone who traffics in property confiscated by Cuba, non-US companies included.
The Helms-Burton Act, signed into law on March 12, 1996, tightened the embargo on Cuba and, through its Title III, gave US nationals a cause of action against anyone profiting from property confiscated by the Cuban regime after 1959. That title was suspended by every president, six months at a time, until it was fully activated on May 2, 2019. It is the textbook extraterritorial sanction: it reaches European companies for transactions with no US link, and the European Union answered as early as November 1996 with its blocking statute. For insurance, it creates a liability exposure the insured cannot see in its own law, and a conflict of laws where obeying one exposes you to the other. The underwriter of a Cuban risk must therefore read two opposing regimes at once.
In late 2022, a Florida federal court ordered four cruise lines, including Carnival and Royal Caribbean, to pay nearly 440 million dollars to Havana Docks for using Havana port docks confiscated in 1960. The court of appeals overturned the judgments in October 2024.
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