Company denies laundering money sent to Cuba

Posted on Friday, 05.02.14



Company denies laundering money sent to Cuba

BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

JTAMAYO@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM



A company whose owner stands accused of laundering and sending to Cuba

$30 million on behalf of Medicare fraudsters in South Florida says it

did nothing wrong and blames a remittance company in Miami and a check

cashing store in Naples.



"Caribbean Transfers has not committed any crimes in the United States,"

the company said in a statement posted Thursday on its Web site

following a string of recent reports about its owner, Jorge Emilio Pérez

de Morales.



A U.S. fugitive from charges of money laundering, Perez has been living

in Havana and has business links with a well known Cuban actor, Jorge

Perugorria, according to reports in the blogs Diario de Cuba and Cuba Al

Descubierto.



The company statement said it has been "working intensely on the

documentation that proves this allegation is totally false," but made no

mention of Perez or his whereabouts.



U.S. prosecutors have described Caribbean Transfers as a sort of

offshore "Western Union." The company, which closed its doors in 2012,

claimed it specialized in remittances to Cuba, the Dominican Republic

and other countries.



Perez was charged in 2012 with financing a money-laundering scheme that

moved more than $30 million in stolen Medicare proceeds from South

Florida through Canada and into Cuba's banking system. Oscar L. Sanchez,

the owner of a Naples check cashing business, pleaded guilty and was

sentenced to 4 ½ years in prison.



Caribbean Transfers said it did not violate U.S. laws because its bank

accounts outside the United States simply received family remittances

sent by a company in Miami, fully licensed by the U.S. government. The

money was then paid to the Cuban families.



Any crimes, it argued, were committed by the Miami remittance company,

the Naples check cashing store and Miami banks that handled the U.S.

government payments to more than 70 Medicare fraudsters in South Florida.



"How was Caribbean Transfers supposed to know that those funds were

illegal?" the statement said, adding that the company "trusted that the

U.S. banks were perfectly regulated, knew their customers perfectly and

were incapable of sending fraudulent money out of their jurisdiction?"



Caribbean Transfers did not identify the Miami remittance company but

sources said it was La Mamba, which also cashed checks. Owner Juan Rene

Caro is serving an 18-year prison sentence for filing $132 million in

false currency transaction reports.



Lawyers generally recommend not commenting on news media reports on a

case, "especially it's a yellow press with clearly politicized biases

such as The Miami Herald and bloggers," The statement added,



"Despite that, we have decided to make some truths public, confident

that this will help many people to find the answers to the obvious

questions that these newspapers hide," it added.



The statement, which was not signed, went on to argue that the U.S.

embargo was to blame "for what happened" because the U.S. sanctions

forbid the direct transfer of money from U.S. to Cuban entities.



Court records in the Oscar Sanchez case show the Cuban-born U.S. citizen

was indicted for his role in laundering the profits of 70 South Florida

medical companies that falsely billed Medicare for $374.4 million and

were paid $70.7 million.



Perez financed the Sanchez scheme and then funneled the money through

shell companies that controlled bank accounts in Canada and Trinidad,

according to the records. The company also operated in the Dominican

Republic and Mexico.



Caribbean Transfers wanted to move millions of dollars to Cuba. But,

facing the U.S. restrictions on remittances to Cuba, the company bought

more than 20 boxes of money orders and transferred the money in amounts

less than $10,000 at a time to avoid having to declare the source of the

funds under U.S. laws.



The company also used aliases in the money orders, according to the

court records, including the name "Bill Clinton."



Source: Company denies laundering money sent to Cuba - Cuba -

MiamiHerald.com -

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/05/02/4094756/company-denies-laundering-money.html