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