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2 articles tagged ‘OFAC’

SaaS and the law: Naked customers

Draconian “know your customer” laws also apply to SaaS ISVs

Suitcase xray

ISVs must consider their jurisdiction, as well as that of their customers, suppliers, processing utilities and data storage providers. Not knowing enough about your customers can be expensive, and could even land you in jail. PaaS providers can add value to European ISVs by abstracting these jurisdiction issues and keeping track of future legal changes.

In Is jetting to Cuba this summer a bad idea for European SaaS ISVs? I reported on how the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) can impact non-US companies. A European travel agent appeared on the OFAC blacklist for selling Cuban holidays.

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USA and Cuba: Extraterritorial jurisdiction

Europeans risk getting dragged into a long-running trade dispute

Map of Cuba

While Cuba is a popular holiday spot for Europeans, a 46-year old trade ban puts Cuba off-limits to Americans. Strictly enforced laws prevent US companies from doing direct or indirect business with Cuba.

The US trade ban became a big problem for travel agent Tour & Marketing International. Although based in Spain, the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) added them to a blacklist. Why? For selling Cuban holidays to Europeans (US citizens cannot travel to Cuba).

As a result, their US-based domain register blocked about 80 of their .com domains for Cuba-related websites. The domain register gave no notice and refused to transfer the domains (they must freeze all US-based assets).

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