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************FRAZ: SIT DOWN BEFORE YOU READ THIS**********

FRAZ SUGAR PLANTATION'S NEW OWNER

Nicolas Gutierrez DD:

http://articles.latimes.com/2006/sep/10/nation/na-cubans10


Cuban American lawyer Nicolas Gutierrez, whose family was one of the wealthiest in Cuba before the revolution, estimates that at least $100 billion in property was taken from Cuban owners.

Although there is no formal registry of Cuban claims, Gutierrez estimates that at least 2 million people on the island or in exile may have the right, as original owners or their heirs, to claim seized assets or compensation if Cuba is democratized.

"Restitution is not only a pro-exile policy, it's a pro-Cuban policy. Most former property owners are still on the island," said Gutierrez, who was born in Miami to exile parents. "We want everyone to get what they lost."

Cuba has the advantage of learning from the mistakes and successes of new democracies in Eastern Europe, said Tania C. Mastrapa, a Miami consultant on foreign property claims who did her doctoral dissertation on ownership resolution in those post-Communist countries.