Cuba Holds Its First Public Auction, a Repossessed Hyundai
The money will be used to pay Pleatex’s debt to Blue Capital Partners, two foreign companies that have operated in Cuba
HAVANA TIMES – The Provincial Court of Havana has disclosed the first call for public auction that will be held in Cuba, a measure introduced in the Code of Process approved at the end of 2021, which allows enforcing a judgment when the guilty party lacks funds to make a payment.
In this case, the auctioned goods is a 2006 Hyundai Accent vehicle that starts with a minimum price of 64,051.03 Cuban pesos (about $2,700 at the official exchange rate of 24 pesos to $1, or 24 to $366 on the informal currency market). This is the appraisal value, and as usual, it is much lower than the market price, since used cars sell for at least $20,000.
The vehicle, white and with a 5301811 gasoline engine, was owned by the company Pleatex Company INC, based in the British Virgin Islands with a branch in Havana, dedicated to the marketing of industrial products and articles. The car was seized to satisfy a debt with the allegedly Spanish Blue Capital Partners S.L., which was represented by a Cuban lawyer and of which there are currently no concrete signs of existence, except in Romania and Israel, where a company with the same name is registered.
Any natural or legal person can participate in the auction, as long as they are not a court official or a lawyer for any of the parties involved in the case. To do this, they must be of legal age and resident in Cuba; meet the specific requirements to acquire goods of this type; accept the existing title, the charges and encumbrances; declare that they know the conditions of the process; and guarantee the deposit in Cuban pesos of the bond ordered by the court — equivalent to 30% of the appraised value or, in this case, 19,215 pesos.
Potential interested parties must submit their applications to the Commercial Chamber of the Provincial Court of Havana within 20 days from March 29, when the edict has been published. In addition, they will be able to inspect the vehicle and its state of conservation, the document indicates, adding that any payment must be made by bank transfer and never in cash.
The auction will put an end to a conflict that goes back a long way, since the lawsuit was filed five years ago. It has amazed countless citizens who have created a parallel debate in the networks of the official press about the relevance of an auction in a communist system that some consider typical of other systems. Other readers defend the appropriateness of public auctions as a way of enforcing judgments, something not intrinsic to capitalism, and most are astonished at the publicity that this procedure has been given.
Translated by Regina Anavy for Translating Cuba