Cuba claims applicant won't give up

Cuba claims applicant won't give up
ADAM GELLER AAP APRIL 27, 2015 11:18AM

IN 2007, Creighton professors held a news conference to announce their
findings about US residents' claims regarding property confiscated by Cuba.

THEY cautioned that they might net just three or four cents on the US
dollar.

Claims holders had long been told their losses would be adjusted for
inflation, making what was valued at nearly $US1.9 billion ($A2.46
billion) in the 1960s worth much more today, at least on paper.
The possibility that the Chester family's losses, once worth $US489,000,
might instead be devalued, rankled Carolyn Chester. And when an investor
called seeking to buy her claim for a fraction of its original value,
she grew angry.
Divorced, with a teenage son, Chester began devoting long hours to
studying family records. She dug for information, trying to understand
how it was that, with so many non-US companies investing in Cuba, its
government could possibly have so little to repay claims.
Poring over articles about Cuba, she disputed comments from readers who
labelled the Americans who had lived on the island as mobsters who got
what they deserved.
"She's taken this thing," her brother says, "and grabbed onto it like a
pit bull".
On a Wednesday morning in December, Chester heard that Obama was going
to deliver a statement about Cuba, and asked for the rest of the day
off. Back home, she leaned toward the television below her mother's
portrait, listening closely as the president spoke of rewriting a "rigid
policy that is rooted in events that took place before most of us were
born".
To Chester, the speech confirmed that politicians and the corporations
that lobby them want to move on, and would be glad if the claims vanished.
But they can't see what she does from her living room, where a 60cm-high
stack of Cuba-related documents crowns the coffee table.
Fidel Castro didn't merely take property, Chester says. He stole her
parents' financial security, her father's health - and any chance of an
inheritance to repair her cracked and listing front steps.
Fifty-six years later, she says, "I'm not going to let him take from me
again".

Source: Cuba claims applicant won't give up | Business News | Business
and Finance News | | dailytelegraph.com.au -
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/business/breaking-news/cuba-claims-applicant-wont-give-up/story-fni0xqe3-1227322817176