Cuba, the Caribbean and Latin America the long view

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, bottom row, from left, Chile's President Sebastian Pinera, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and Cuba's President Raul Castro, wave as they pose for a group photo in Santiago, Chile, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013. The leaders are gathered in Santiago for the CELAC-EU summit, a 60-nation two day economic meeting.

Cuba's President Raúl Castro is in Chile today to chair a summit meeting between the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the European Union. Following this meeting, the presidency of CELAC passes to Cuba.

CELAC is a new counter-hegemonic and integrationist project in which all the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean have joined together with the expressed exclusion of the United States, Canada and their colonial dependencies and territories.

The decision to pass the presidency to Cuba confirms the CELAC member countries’ confidence in Cuba and its importance. It is also the most palpable evidence of the failure of the US policy of isolation maintained against Cuba since the revolution in 1959.

Washington historically attempted to block any kind of Cuban relationship with the rest of the nations on the continent. Early on, in the 1960s, it used its power and influence to force all the countries of the region (with the exception of Mexico and Canada) to cut off diplomatic relations with Havana

However, this policy of isolation began to collapse in 1972, when Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago all established diplomatic relations with Cuba.

"If we go back to the 1960’s, Cuba only had diplomatic relations with Mexico (given U.S. pressure) and very few commercial links in the region," notes Cuba's Deputy Foreign Trade and Investment Minister Orlando Hernández Guillén, whose overview of the current situation of commercial ties between Cuba and Latin American and Caribbean nations can be read in full HERE

"After the decisive step in relation to Cuba taken by the four English-speaking Caribbean countries, little by little Latin American nations approached us, some of them utilizing commercial links and others the diplomatic context. And today, the country has become an active member of the Latin American community."

What are Cuba's foriegn policy intentions in the region?

Basically, ties with Latin America are included in the Cuban Constitution, which establishes that the government bases its international relations on the principles of equality of rights, self-determination, territorial integrity, the independence of states, beneficial international cooperation and mutual and equitable interest; as well as the peaceful resolution of controversies on equal footing, and other principles proclaimed in the United Nations Charter and other international treaties to which Cuba is a party.

At the same time, it reaffirms Cuba’s willingness to integrate and cooperate with the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, which share a common identity and the historic need to advance together toward economic and political integration in order to achieve genuine independence.

This position is endorsed in the Lineamientos or guidelines approved last year at the 6th Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, which also specify basic aspects of Cuba's close ties with Latin America, through the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), the Latin American Integration Association (ALADI) and the Association of Caribbean States, among other sub-regional institutions to which Cuba belongs. These have also provided a space for the development of relations with other countries, with the exception of the Organization of American States (OAS) and its sub-system of institutions.

In terms of trade Cuba’s foreign trade with the region represents more than 40% of its commercial interchange at the global level, placing the country in one of the top spots in the region, with regards to the volume of intraregional trade.

In this respect, the relations Cuba has with Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela are very important. In the case of Venezuela, it is the No.1 trading partner and a vital supplier of energy resources.

Even though the Cuban government is developing a policy to promote the replacement of food imports, the country still spends $1,700-1,800 million per year on food alone, and Latin America is an important supplier of foodstuffs, especially countries like Brazil and Argentina.

Cuban exports to Latin America range from services (especially in health) and biotechnology products to construction materials, while it imports from Latin America raw materials, intermediate products, machinery and equipment, above all from Brazil.

Cuba has important credit lines with Brazil and Venezuela and these also promote investment and development . In particular, the Port of Mariel is being reconstructed and mobernised with Brazilian cooperation and funding and the participation of Brazilian companies. This is a huge project with enormous potential to redevelop the port of Havana into a leisure and tourist hub.

Cuba's relations with Latin America have reached this new high point because of Cuba’s gradual progress in terms of developing  preferential trade links with the ALADI member countries and later with Central American countries like Guatemala, Panama, El Salvador and nations comprising the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).With the accession of Hugo Chávez to power in Venezuela in 1998,  agreements have advanced with Venezuela and now with Bolivia and Ecuador through the ALBA so much so that Cuba currently has relations which we are equivalent to free trade, as there are no tariffs related to the circulation of merchandise.

Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Antigua & Barbuda, Dominica, and St. Vincent & the Grenadines are the ALBA members, and this body represents a new kind of integration organization which has altered the political and economic dynamics of the region. 

Cuba is therefore fully inserted in the Latin American and Caribbean region, and is incorporated in all the area’s coordination and integration structures, apart from the OAS. But even at the OAS, the Latin American members have made it clear that Cuba must be admitted to this body in future.

As far as the future is concerned therefore, the Latin American countries have demonstrated that they do not share the apprent US desire to overthrow the current Cuban government. It is largely through the relations that Cuba now has with countries in the region that it has been able weather the international financial crisis relatively well. The Cuban economy grew 3.1% in 2012. This was achieved despite the Obama administration imposing the most fines of any presidency on foreign banking institutions for dealing with Cuba. 

It is a stark reality for the Obama administration that there is little that it can do to halt either the integrationist current in Latin America - or Cuba's central role within it. This weekend's summit in Chile is the clearest demonstration of that yet.

Wish list on Cuba for Obama

The influential US magazine The Nation carries this article on Cuba policy this week by Peter Kornbluh, the knowledgeable and erudite director of the Cuba programme of the National Security Archive. Peter is quite possibly regarded as a leftie and outside the Washington political mainstream, but the fact that this is published in The Nation pushes it high up the Google search engine. Here is Peter's wish list for Obama on Cuba policy:

(1) Remove Cuba from the State Department list of nations that support terrorism. Among The Nation’s list of twenty ways the president should exercise his executive power is this long-overdue action. Cuba’s designation as a supporter of terrorism is an enduring injustice. Yes, Cuba has some criminal fugitives living on the island. But it is hard to accuse Cuba of harboring terrorists while Luis Posada Carriles, a prolific lifelong terrorist, is living freely in Florida. Moreover, Cuba’s current efforts to host and mediate a cease-fire and permanent peace accord between the FARC and the government of Colombia is hard evidence that it is playing a constructive role in seeking to end conflicts that breed terrorism in the region.

(2) While we are on the subject, Obama should order the arrest of Luis Posada Carriles and hold him under the Patriot Act until his extradition to Venezuela, from which he is a fugitive for the terrorist crime of blowing up a civilian airliner in October 1976, can be arranged. When the Bush administration let Posada set up residence in Miami in 2005, Venezuela sent a formal extradition request. If Obama is serious about fighting terrorism, he should finally grant that request.

(3) With Cuba off the terrorism list, Obama should end the economic and commercial sanctions that have accompanied its designation as a terrorist nation. The Department of the Treasury would thus cease to fine international banks for doing business with Cuba, which has undermined Cuba’s slow evolution toward a more capitalist-oriented economic system.

(4) And to support economic changes currently underway in Cuba, Obama should expand the general licensing for travel to Cuba of businessmen, scientists, citizens and others associated with industries like agriculture, travel, construction, oil, automobiles, healthcare and more. While the travel ban itself cannot be lifted without a majority vote in Congress, the president can create categories of general licensing that will allow far more Americans to freely travel to Cuba. Such a decree would intruct the Office of Foreign Assets Control to stop playing the role of travel dictator and simply provide all necessary licenses to travel agencies and educational interest groups involved in promoting travel to Cuba. Now, ironically, Cuban citizens are more free to travel here than US citizens are to travel there, since the Castro government lifted more than fifty years of restrictions on the ability of its citizens to travel freely abroad, earlier this month. If Obama is to be true to his overall commitment to advance civil rights, he can with the basic civil right of allowing US citizens to travel freely to Cuba.

(5) The president should also reconfigure the so-called “Cuban Democracy and Contingency Planning Program” mandated by the Helms-Burton Act and run out of USAID, from the failed “regime change” orientation to a set of transparent, non-interventionist “people-to-people” programs. Incoming Secretary of State John Kerry, who knows quite a bit about USAID's misconduct in Cuba from his tenure as Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, should immediately move to review and revamp the goals and operations of these misguided and counterproductive regime change efforts.

(6) To engage Cuba with normal diplomacy, Obama should order a bilateral dialogue on all areas of mutual interest: environmental cooperation, counternarcotics operations, counterterrorism, medical support for Haiti and more. On the agenda should be the case of contractor Alan Gross, who was sent to Cuba by the USAID Democracy Program on a quasi-covert mission to set up independent satellite network communications systems, and then abandoned to his predictable fate of being caught and tossed in jail. It’s time to let him return home to his family.

(7) Finally, Obama should commute the sentences of the so-called “Cuban Five”: Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, and René González (who is now on parole). These intelligence operatives were actually counterterrorism agents focused on anti-Castro exile groups that, frankly, have posed a threat to Cuban citizens and national security interests alike. All of them have served more than twelve years in US prison. They have been punished enough and also deserve to return home to their families.

The heat is clearly on for Obama to DO SOMETHING on Cuba in his second term. The Cuban revolutionary government has proved itself to be extremely durable - it just ain't going anywhere. With issues like migration, climate change, drugs, the economic crisis and the fight against terrorism all requiring some kind of bilateral attention, coupled with the diplomatic embarrassment of Cuba holding the presidency of the new regional body CELAC, which begins its summit on Sunday, means that the US is beginning to look not only isolated but frankly utterly stupid. The embargo didn't make much sense once the Soviet Union disapppeared now it makes absolutely no sense at all and has become a policy that is not in the US's own interest. Obama has the best opportunity that any President since Kennedy has had to put US policy towards Cuba on a sane path. The tragedy will be felt more in Washington if he fails to grasp it.

  

Golden boys start to return

An interesting consequence of the new migraton rules now in place is the way in which the Cuban government has turned what was once a loss into a gain.
It now appears from this report from NBC that Major League Baseball pitcher Jose Ariel Contreras Camejo is in Cuba tending to a family matter.
This  makes him the first recorded Cuban athlete to return to the country under the new immigration policy, after leaving the island to play professional baseball and earn millions in the lucrative game 'north of the border.'
In a phone interview with NBC News, Contreras denied having any problems entering the island.
“If there had been a problem, they would have sent me back,” said Contreras on the phone before declining a more extended interview. “I do not want to talk to anyone about what I am sharing with my family.”
His brother Humberto Demetrio previously stated that Contreras traveled to Cuba because his mother had to undergo a limb amputation and is recovering in the Salvador Allende Hospital .
Under the new immigration guidelines adopted on 14 January, Cubans who left the country through irregular channels in the 90s and had spent eight years outside of the country since their emigration, would be allowed to make temporary visits.
Contreras was once a golden boy of the Cuban amateur game, now he is a golden boy of a different kind - basically he's loaded. It is hard to imagine that he will not use his newly-acquired right to return to put some of his fortune to use in the island... It's the latest Cuban ruse yet to beat the blockade - export athletes and then import them back again. Why wouldn't they? Their money will go much farther in retirement in Cuba than it would in the USA - especially if they invest in a business...

Gross case reveals details of US subversion in Cuba

http://www.nsarchive.org

Washington, DC, January 18, 2013 -- The U.S. government has "between five to seven different transition plans" for Cuba, and the USAID-sponsored "Democracy" program aimed at the Castro government is "an operational activity" that demands "continuous discretion," according to documents filed in court this week, and posted today by the National Security Archive. The records were filed by Development Alternatives Inc (DAI), one of USAID's largest contractors, in response to a lawsuit filed by the family of Alan Gross, who was arrested in Cuba in December 2009 for attempting to set up satellite communications networks on the island, as part of the USAID program.

In an August 2008 meeting toward the end of the George W. Bush administration, according to a confidential memorandum of conversation attached to DAI's filing, officials from the "Cuba Democracy and Contingency Planning Program," as the Democracy effort is officially known, told DAI representatives that "USAID is not telling Cubans how or why they need a democratic transition, but rather, the Agency wants to provide the technology and means for communicating the spark which could benefit the population." The program, the officials stated, intended to "provide a base from which Cubans can 'develop alternative visions of the future.'"

Gross has spent three years of a 15-year sentence in prison in Cuba, charged and convicted of "acts against the integrity of the state" for attempting to supply members of Cuba's Jewish community with Broadband Global Area Network (BGAN) satellite communications consoles and establish independent internet networks on the island. Last year, he and his wife, Judy, sued both DAI and USAID for failing to adequately prepare, train and supervise him given the dangerous nature of the democracy program activities.

During a four-hour meeting last November 28, 2012, with Archive analyst Peter Kornbluh at the military hospital where he is incarcerated, Gross insisted that "my goals were not the same as the program that sent me." He called on the Obama administration to meet Cuba at the negotiating table and resolve his case, among other bilateral issues between the two nations.

The exhibits attached to DAI's court filing included USAID's original "Request for Proposals" for stepped up efforts to bring about political transition to Cuba, USAID communications with DAI, and Gross's own proposals for bringing computers, cell phones, routers and BGAN systems--"Telco in a Bag," as he called it--into Cuba.

According to Kornbluh, DAI's filing is "a form of 'graymail'"--an alert to the U.S. government that unless the Obama administration steps up its efforts to get Gross released, the suit would yield unwelcome details of ongoing U.S. intervention in Cuba.

In its effort to dismiss the suit, DAI's filing stated that it was "deeply concerned that the development of the record in this case over the course of litigation [through discovery] could create significant risks to the U.S. government's national security, foreign policy, and human rights interests."
Check out today's posting at the National Security Archive website - http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB411/

Find it on Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/NSArchive

Unredacted, the Archive blog - http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/


MORE ON THIS STORY from Tracey Eaton HERE

Cooperative Cuba is on the horizon

Now here's an opinion piece that caught my eye by someone called Keith Harrington posting on a website called "Truthout" in which he comments on the fact that Cuba may be beginning to build a different model of market socialism that sees a huge role for workers-owned cooperatives. Keith links to this article by Marcelo Vieta, an economist who has made two trips to Cuba to conferences where the cooperative solution was discussed. They both make for interesting reading. Keith for example makes this point:

"Specifically, the government is placing high priority on the development of worker-owned-and-managed firms and has recently passed a law intended to launch an experimental cadre of 200 such firms. Under the law, workers - rather than government bureaucrats or elite boards of directors - will democratically run the businesses, set their own competitive prices, determine wages and salaries and decide what to do with the profits they generate. In other words, Cuba's new worker cooperatives will operate pretty much along the same lines as their successful cousins in the capitalist world, including Spain's Mondragon Cooperative Corporation.
But what sets the Cuban cooperative experiment apart and renders it such an incredible opportunity for the global worker-cooperative movement, is its occurrence in a political-economic milieu that is currently free from the distorting effects of capitalist competition. This is significant because while cooperatives have proven just as competitive as capitalist firms in a capitalist context, when capitalist profits and growth assume top priority, worker-owned firms may be compelled to act more like capitalist firms and subordinate core objectives such as worker empowerment and well-being, community development and environmental sustainability. Indeed, as cooperatives grow, even the percentage of actual worker owners in their ranks has been known to decline, as we've seen with Mondragon.
In short, the worker-ownership movement could greatly benefit from a national-scale economic environment that will allow cooperative enterprises to develop according to their own particular democratic nature and exhibit their true potential, free from the profit-above-all dictates of capitalism. No country bears as much promise in this respect than contemporary Cuba."

While Marcelo concludes:

"In sum, from the countless conversations I had while in Cuba with academics, government workers, co-operators, and people on the street, many Cubans are very willing to contemplate and consider the role of a larger co-operative sector. There is no doubt that many Cubans are working hard to make this a reality in the coming months and years. My sense is that many – perhaps the majority – of Cubans know that they have too much to lose to go down the neoliberal path, a distinct possibility given the trajectory of other ‘socialist’ command economies, and the structural reforms that are unfolding. The co-operative path to economic sustainability would, I think, be a viable alternative development model for many key sectors of the Cuban economy. Such a development model would keep social wealth within the country and expand the capacities of Cuban workers in self-management. Such activism and participation among workers can also be a key spur to the nature of reforms in crucial areas where large state enterprises will remain, whether fully state owned or in joint enterprises. The co-operative road to reforms, most importantly, could help conserve the successes of Cuba's brand of socialism, notably its egalitarian education, cultural and health sectors, which remain quite unique across South America and the Caribbean. At the same time, such co-operative-based reforms could help Cuba move along a new path toward 21st century socialism."

These may just  be two lone voices crying in the "blogerness", but they have a handle on that curious Cuban knack of doing the exceptional. Always, with Cuba, it is wise to be prepared to be surprised.

Chronicles of a death foretold

To read the US press you'd be forgiven for thinking that Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez is already dead, or at least so near to death's door that it is only a matter of time before he succumbs to the grim reaper. Take for example today's Los Angeles Times: 'Expect a stealth leadership struggle in post-Chavez Venezuela' or ABC news: 'U.S. Venezuelans Reflect on Chávez's Fate and Legacy'. But although the Venezuelan leader is undoubtedly ill and too ill to attend last week's inauguration ceremony to be sworn in as President, it is by no means clear as to whether the prognosis of his illness is as dire as those who wish for his demise are assuming. 

A friend who is in the island has contacted me recently and has told me that the view that Chavez is to die is not one that is prevalent. There is some anxiety about the political situation and the fact that this illness has handed some advantage to the Veneezuelan opposition in terms of the ideological struggle to maintain a revolutionary hegemeony within Venezuela, but most people on the island believe that Chavez has a greater chance of recovery from this current illness than of dying. 

The reason for this is twofold: Firstly, the Cuban media has been clear from the start that Chavez's operation on the cancer was satisfactory and that the immediate danger to his health is not from that. The threat to his life at present is a respiratory infection that he picked up in the hospital. But this, according to Cuban doctors is treatable.  

The second reason is that Cubans, because of the national emphasis on health care and from now having two generations benefitting from a doctor and two nurses living in their neighbourhood, are very knowledgeable about health issues. Although the exact nature of Chávez's problems has not been announced, Cubans have discussed the possibilities with the health professionals they know. Their confidence in a recovery is based upon an informed understanding of what the most likely outcome will be. In an island where constraints on information are traditional and well-understood, the fact that the official media has not been explicit about the Venezuelan leader's condition does not cause anxiety.

As is often the case, while the rest of the world struts and frets about the island, those on the island are calm and unperturbed. If the Cubans are right, then there are going to be a lot of red and sad faces around when the Venezuelan leader makes a 'second coming'.

Cuba can cope without Chávez

Once again the web is abuzz with stories of impending doom for Cuba if Venezuela's Hugo Chavez loses his battle against Cancer.  However, I do not believe that the death of Chavez would be as disastrous for Cuba as many suppose.
Just over 18 months ago, when the Venezuela leader's illness was treated for the first time, I was asked by some friends in Cuba if it would be as serious for the island if Venezuelan support disappeared as it was when the Soviet Union collapsed int he early 90s.
"Stephen, you are a person who has spent a lot of time studying Cuba," I was asked, "What is your opinion? Have we not transferred our dependency on the Soviet Union now to Venezuela? Will we not find ourselves in the same situation that we were in at the start of the 1990s if Chávez falls?"
As I wrote in the Guardian back then, when the question is put this way, the answer is emphatically no. If Venezuela were to disappear tomorrow, Cuba would have difficulties but it would survive. Here's why.
First, the dependency on Venezuela today is simply not as great as the dependency that Cuba had with Soviet Union and the former socialist countries. When they collapsed, Cuba lost 85% of its trade practically overnight. While Venezuela is by far the largest trading partner that Cuba has right now, the proportion of the trade exchange between the two countries has never amounted to a half of Cuba's total. Given that not all of Venezuela's relations with Cuba would disappear immediately, the initial shock to the Cuban system would therefore not be as great.
Second, unlike in 1989 when almost all of Cuba's trade was with the Soviet bloc countries, Cuba has diversified its trading partners enormously since then. China, Vietnam, Canada, Brazil, Spain and even the United States (under a food sales exception to the embargo) are now all very significant partners. These would be able to fill the gaps left by Venezuela. Whereas, in 1989, Cuba had to redirect its entire economic relations to face a completely new reality, it has already made that adjustment today. Recovery from the shock of the absence of its major partner would, therefore, be quicker.
This leads on to a related third point: Cuba has also diversified its economy. In 1989, about 90% of its export earnings came from the sale of sugar to the Soviet bloc. Now, Cuba is no longer dependent on one crop for its income and can count on a variety of industries that will remain largely unaffected by the demise of Venezuela. A look at the breakdown of Cuba's export earnings shows that nickel, biotech products and tourism make up a huge portion of its income. In 1989, Cuba could not count on any of these, so the country is in a better shape to face adversity than it was then.
The main threat from a collapse of Cuba's relationship with Venezuela is from a fall in cheap oil imports and a drop in earnings from the export of medical services to Venezuela. Venezuela supplies about half of Cuba's oil needs at a preferential price, and purchase of the services of Cuban doctors accounts for something like 20% of Cuba's current annual earnings. Losing these deals would be a significant blow to the country, but it would not be catastrophic – and certainly not as a bad as the loss of the partnership with the Soviet bloc in 1989.
Back then, all of Cuba's oil came from the Soviet Union at preferential prices and the effect of having to buy oil on the world market was to cut Cuba's oil imports by 75%. The consequence of that was severe rationing of electricity, sudden power cuts and the almost complete cessation of automobile transport. A crisis on that scale would simply not happen now. For one thing, Cuba would be able to buy more oil than it could in 1989 because its hard currency earnings are higher now; and for another, it now supplies half of it own oil needs and is completely self-sufficient in electricity production. While the price of gasoline would inevitably rise as a consequence of the disappearance of Venezuela, a shortage of electricity would not occur because Cuba now generates all its electricity from oil it produces itself.
None of this is to say that Cuba would not face a problem if the Chávez government fell in Venezuela. It surely would. There would be something like 29,000 medical personnel who would be returned to the island, adding to the numbers of professionals finding it hard to practise. There would be an oil shortage and there would be inevitable austerity imposed on a population that has suffered decades of hardship. But the Cuba of today is vastly changed from the country it was in 1989. To say that it has a friend and ally in Chávez is undoubtedly true, but to say that the Cuban revolution needs him in order to survive is palpably false.

Obama to ease embargo? Don't bank on it

Ideas that President Obama has eased the embargo on Cuba are wide of the mark. Although he has relaxed some travel restrictions to the island, in fact the Obama first term saw an increase of financial pressure on Cuba, not a lessening.
This has been most marked in the avid application of fines on foreign banks who do business on the island. 
Pressed by Washington, recently Switzerland’s fourth-largest bank dropped its business with Cuba, Swiss media has reported.
Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB), which is state-owned, had picked up a Cuba portfolio after Swiss banking giants UBS and Crédit Suisse canceled their business with the island seven and five years ago, respectively.
The Obama Administration has increased the financial pressure on Cuba, partly as a side effect of a crackdown on Iran and drug-related money laue Treasndering. Thury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) recently issued a record fine of $1.9 billion to Britain’s HSBC over alleged money laundering in Mexico and violations of the U.S. embargo.
ZKB “cannot avoid paying attention to embargoes and blacklists,” a bank spokesman told finance newsletter Inside Paradeplatz. “After prominent competitors bid farewell to the Cuba business long ago, due to the U.S. embargo, Zürcher Kantonalbank is now pulling out of Cuba for the same reason.”
The Kantonalbank move happened just as the U.S. government is investigating the role of Switzerland’s largest banks in tax evasion by U.S. citizens.
UBS in 2004 paid the United States a fine of $140 million, after the bank had swapped old dollar bills for new ones for Cuba-related customers.

Biggest fines of the banking world since 2009

1. $1.9 billion, HSBC, December 2012. Charge: Accused of money laundering activities tied to drug cartels in Mexico, terror-linked groups in Saudi Arabia.
2. $667 million, Standard Chartered, August and December 2012. Charge: Violating U.S. sanctions on transactions with Iran, Burma, Libya and Sudan.
3. $619 million, ING Bank NV, June 2012. Charge: Covering up fund transfers in violation of U.S. sanctions against Cuba, Iran.
4. $536 million, Credit Suisse, December 2009. Charge: Allowing clients in Iran, Libya, Sudan, Myanmar and Cuba to conduct financial transactions.
5. $470 million, Barclays, November 2012. Charge: Rigging electricity market.
6. $450 million, Barclays, June 2012. Charge: Manipulating bank Libor rates.
7. $350 million, Lloyds TSB Group. Charge: Allowing Iranian and Sudanese clients access to the U.S. banking system.
8. $335 million, Bank of America, December 2011. Charge: Racial discrimination in lending rates.
9. $298 million, Barclays, August 2010. Charge: Allowing client payments from Cuba, Sudan.
10. $275 million, JPMorgan Chase, February 2012. Charge: Problems in mortgage servicing business.
11. $233 million, Royal Bank of Scotland, June 2012. Charge: Manipulating bank Libor rates.
12. $207 million, Ally Financial, February 2012. Charge: Problems in mortgage servicing business.