OFAC Regulatory Provisions - 31 CFR § 515.576 - Activities of private foundations or research or educational institutes.

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TURBOFAC Commentary (602 words)

Notes:

[9-30-26 update – provision amended to implement changes expanding the prohibition at 515.209 to “direct or indirect financial transactions”, rather than just “direct” financial transactions].

1) Refer to FAQ # 709.

2) This would appear to license, for example, the sort of polling that was the subject to the license request in 030424-FACRL-IA-03 (see original application).

3) The provision was amended on 9-24-2020 to account for the addition of 515.210 to the .

4) For guidance on the notion of consistency with a "full-time schedule," see Letter from Treasury to Rep. Diaz-Balart re: SCP Cuba Travel; FAQ # 711 and "Prepaid Tourist Packages are Prohibited" (2001 guidance), and comments thereto.

5) Comprehensive Guidelines for License Applications to Engage in Travel-Related Transactions Involving Cuba (2004-2015), OFAC advanced interpretations of a previous version of 515.576 that appear to be of significance for the purposes of interpreting the current version of 515.576. At the time of the last revision of the “Comprehensive Guidelines” (prior to their 2015 removal following a major overhaul of the CACR travel GLs), 515.576 provided as follows:

§ 515.576 Activities of private foundations or research or educational institutes.
Specific licenses may be issued on a case-by-case basis authorizing the travel-related transactions set forth in § 515.560(c) and such additional transactions as are directly incident to activities by private foundations or research or educational institutes that have an established interest in international relations to collect information related to Cuba for noncommercial purposes, not otherwise covered by the general license for professional research contained in § 515.564 or more properly issued under § 515.575, relating to humanitarian projects. Specific licenses may be issued pursuant to this section authorizing transactions for multiple trips to Cuba for the same project over an extended period of time.

See https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2014-title31-vol3/xml/CFR-2014-title31-vol3-part515.xml.

As it relates to the general license at the current 515.576, it is essentially the specific licensing policy at 515.576 (2014), but in the form of a general license. In the “Comprehensive Guidelines” document, OFAC gave the following notable “examples” of travel that would have been “Potentially licensable under” 515.576 (2014).

Example 1: A private research foundation with a ten-year history of producing essays on international relations issues wishes to send a team made up of its full-time employees to Cuba to collect information for a current study of the relationship that countries in the Western Hemisphere have with European countries. This project is for noncommercial purposes.

Example 2: The same research foundation described in the first example wishes to hire temporarily and send to Cuba a college professor, who is not an employee of the foundation, to collect information for the same project.

The above are both presumably authorized by the current version of 515.576.

Finally, note the following statement, made in the "Comprehensive Guidelines":

Example: A museum of fine arts wishes to send its board of directors to Cuba to collect information relevant to an upcoming display of artworks of Cuban artists at the museum. The fact that the museum has displayed works of international artists on numerous occasions in its history does not demonstrate that the museum has an established interest in international relations [for the purposes of the specific licensing policy at 515.576 titled "Activities of private foundations or research or educational institutes"]. Authorization may be available, however, under section 515.545, regarding the importation of informational materials.

This highlights a limitation to the meaning of "established interest in international relations" that presumably applies to the current version of 515.576.

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31 CFR § 515.576 - Activities of private foundations or research or educational institutes.

TURBOFAC Commentary (602 words)