[Cuba Penalty Schedule]
Reporting and Procedures Regulations; Cuban Assets Control Regulations: Publication of Economic Sanctions Enforcement Guidelines
AGENCY:
Office of Foreign Assets Control, Treasury.
ACTION:
Proposed rule with request for comments.
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Background
OFAC hereby publishes as appendices to 31 CFR parts 501 and 515 its Guidelines for the enforcement of the various economic sanctions programs it administers. These Guidelines review OFAC's procedures for determining whether an economic sanctions violation has occurred and outline the range of enforcement options available, including the imposition of a civil monetary penalty. A schedule of proposed penalties for certain violations of the Cuban Assets Control Regulations, 31 CFR part 515, is published as a separate appendix to those particular regulations. These Guidelines serve as a general framework for OFAC's enforcement activities, but OFAC may depart from them in particular cases.
The primary mission...
1) The “Cuba Penalty Schedule” found in this document is incorporated by reference into the published OFAC Enforcement Guidelines at Appendix A to Part 501. The penalty schedule calls for civil penalties for certain travel related transactions that are significantly lower than other categories of CACR violations. See e.g. Hotelbeds USA, Inc. (2019), in which the base penalty for 703 CACR violations was only 353,500, even though those violations were not made known to OFAC through voluntary disclosure.
2) A notable aspect of the Cuba Penalty Schedule that does not appear in other OFAC documents is the reference to “agency notice” factor taken into consideration in connection with penalty amount determinations, and, more specifically, “a notation of a telephonic conversation or letter from OFAC advising the party that the conduct...