Last week the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) released its monthly report on civil penalties imposed by OFAC. Among those listed was a $1,769 fine imposed on Aero Vacations, a small travel agency in Los Angeles serving Spanish-speaking customers. According to the Penalty Notice, Aero Vacations violated the Cuban Assets Control Regulations when it initiated the wire transfer of USD $2,709 to to Scotiabank Inverlat, Mexico City for the account of Viajes Viñales Tours, S.A. de C.V., a company which OFAC alleges is on the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List.

Aero Vacations filed a response to OFAC’s Pre-Penalty Notice claiming that “absent access to Viñales documents, Aero Vacations had no reason to suspect that Viñales was a sanctioned entity.” It’s not quite clear what Aero Vacations meant by that defense, but OFAC rejected it, chiding Aero Vacations that “[a]ll U.S. businesses have an obligation to ensure that their international business partners are not listed” on the SDN list — including, apparently, tiny travel agencies where little English appears to be spoken.

Aero Vacations had, I think, at least one better defense to the Pre-Penalty Notice. As is often the case, it was not at all clear that Viajes Viñales Tours to whom the money was transferred was the same entity, or could reasonably be thought to be the same entity, as the “VINALES TOURS, Mexico City, Mexico [CUBA]” that appears on the SDN list, given the different name, the absence of a specific address, and the different spelling of Viñales that appears on the list. (In Spanish, the letters “n” and “ñ” are different letters, each with their own place in the alphabet and not simply the same letter with different diacritical markings.)

Rather than chasing down a Spanish-speaking storefront travel operator in Los Angeles for allegedly dealing with Vinales Tours, perhaps OFAC should consider speaking with Network Solutions, which is the domain registrar for Vinales Tours’s website, www.vinalestours.com. Network Solutions, as registrar, also provides the Whois Server for that Website. Although Network Solutions may be just as unaware that it is dealing with an SDN as Aero Vacations was, OFAC would do much more to stymie Vinales Tours by shutting down its website than by fining one travel agent for one wire transfer.

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