Case No. CU-2016-325292-1
[ ]
General Counsel
Open Society Institute
224 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019
Dear Ms. [ ]:
This is in response to the request of January 11, 2016 (the “Application”), on behalf of the Open Society Institute (OSI) to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), requesting authorization to provide a financial grant in the amount of $95,000.00 to the Latin American Center on Sexuality and Human Rights (CLAM), a Brazilian human rights organization that focuses on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender issues. You state that OSI’s grant objective is to enable CLAM to organize a cultural exchange between Brazil and Cuba focused on LGBT issues and conduct human rights research concerning LGBT issues in Cuba and Brazil. You further state that CLAM would conduct these activities...
1) The applicant requests authorization to provide a non-sanctioned non-U.S. person (“CLAM”) with a grant “to enable [that person] to organize a cultural exchange between Brazil and Cuba focused on LGBT issues and conduct human rights research concerning LGBT issues in Cuba and Brazil,” where the activities would be conducted “in coordination with the Cuban government-funded National Center for Sex Education [“CENESEX”], an organization that advocates tolerance of LGBT issues in Cuba.”
OFAC, citing 515.590(a) and (b) as the basis for its conclusion, evidently determines as a threshold issue that the Cuban National CENESEX would have an “interest” in the grant, where it is specifically earmarked for a sanctions-implicating transaction. This is an unsurprising “indirect financing” determination, but notable nonetheless given how unusual they are. (See generally General Note on “Indirect Financing,” or Investments in Third Country Companies that do...