Manati Industries, Inc (MNII)

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An older article (Dec '15), but still very relevant...

“This meeting is the first step in a complex process that may take some time, but the United States views the resolution of outstanding claims as a top priority for normalization,” the American official said.

Mr. Feinberg noted that Cuban officials should be motivated to make a deal because they had no doubt paid close attention to the legislative elections last weekend in Venezuela, where the leftist government that keeps Cuba afloat financially took a beating at the polls for the first time in 17 years.
Cuba needs the United States to lift the trade embargo, and the best way to get that done is by settling the property claims, he said. The embargo was put in place in 1962 after a dispute that began precisely because Fidel Castro expropriated American oil companies that had refused to process Russian crude.
With an end to Venezuela’s financial aid a greater possibility, Cuba needs a new revenue stream. Soon.
“The fuse has been lit,” Mr. Feinberg said. “Time is running out.”

Past examples of such settlements have varied considerably, with claimants receiving as little as 10 percent of their claims, with no interest. When the Berlin Wall fell, American claimants got 100 percent of the value of their properties, plus interest.


In Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, confiscated properties were sometimes returned to their original owners.
Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania offered compensation, “usually inadequate, and often symbolic and not necessarily monetary,” said Nicolás J. Gutiérrez, a consultant in Miami who has worked on the issue for decades after his family lost a $35 million empire in Cuba.
The Cuban case is trickier: Not only does the government have its own counterclaim, but the people who did the confiscating are still in power.
In that sense, Cuba’s situation is more parallel with Vietnam and China.
In 1979, China agreed to pay $80 million to a China Claims Fund, which allowed American claimants 39 percent of the value of their lost properties, according to the Brookings study. Vietnam, to normalize relations with the United States, agreed in 1995 to apply its assets frozen by the United States government to pay claimants 100 percent of the principal and 80 percent of the interest they were owed.

Mr. Kelly said the Cuban counterclaim for reparations should not be taken seriously.
“Those claims are not supported by international law,” he said in an email. “The property claims are.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/world/americas/talks-begin-in-cuba-on-confiscated-us-property-worth-billions.html?_r=0

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