Sandwich sanctions

Carlos Arguelles runs a little Cuban sandwich shop in Belfast. It’s legal, he has a business license, all above board, definitely not under US sanctions.

His shop works through Deliveroo for home orders. And, for the past few months, payments from Deliveroo have been sporadic to non-existent. Not through any fault of Deliveroo’s, but simply because these payments go through an American bank (Deliveroo is owned by DoorDash, a US company) and the bank’s compliance system twitches at any mention of “Cuba”.

He’s now out more than £7,000 and had to stop using the service because paying wages is hard when some robot in New Jersey is hoarding your money.

Obviously, the US President didn’t put a sandwich shop on his target list, the bank’s software did.

But, yet again, that’s the point: the US doesn’t need to target you directly. All that’s needed is the infrastructure you rely on (payments, maps, cloud, whatever…) to run through systems subject to US law, and US political issues (there are many) suddenly become your issues too.

Colin