Blacklisted British online entrepreneur gives up on Cuba.

Since the mid-1990s, Stephen A. Marshall had been a fixture within Havana's expatriate community.

The 38-year-old businessman, originally from Yorkshire, England, had come to Cuba to start up a venture dedicated to providing online travel services. He was often seen entertaining friends and business clients at the Club Nautico, near his office at the Marina Hemingway complex in western Havana.

Marshall's firm, Tour and Marketing International Ltd., registered in the British Virgin Islands, served a growing clientele through his primary website, GoCubaPlus.com, and over 100 related sites (see our profile of Marshall, CubaNews, March 2004, page 8).

During the late 1990s, he even used a companion site, RealEstateCuba.com, to dabble in selling the limited number of luxury condos that the Cuban government allowed to be constructed and sold to wealthy foreigners looking for a second home in Havana.

In 2005, European Business magazine reported that Marshall's 2004 revenues from his online Cuba travel business came to 1.06 million euros (a little over $1 million).

But lately, Marshall's websites seem to have disappeared into the ether.

Not long ago, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control added most of them to its list of Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs).

Under OFAC regulations, persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction are barred from doing business with any entity or individual on the SDN list. This means U.S. citizens or groups who are licensed to travel to Cuba cannot make their travel arrangements through any of Marshall's travel sites; they may only use travel agents authorized by OFAC to make bookings to Cuba.

OFAC also says that foreign firms active in Cuba and conducting business on behalf of Cuban entities are "nationals of Cuba" for the purpose of barring Americans from doing any business activity with them.

"If his company is totally dedicated to promoting tourism in Cuba, that makes him a 'national' of Cuba," said Hal Eren, a Washington attorney and former OFAC official familiar with the agency's sanctions program. "His business' exclusive dedication is for Cuba, which makes him eligible for the SDN list."

Reached by phone in the Canary Islands, Marshall declined to comment on OFAC's activities against him. But he confirmed that he indeed pulled out of Cuba over a year ago.

"The investment climate in Cuba changed when China and Venezuela started cutting deals with Havana," said the entrepreneur, who now runs Online Travel Management.

He added that along with the more favorable investment climate in the Canary Islands, he's also eyeing real-estate opportunities in the West African nation of Cape Verde.

Marshall's comments are consistent with those confidentally made to CubaNews a year ago by a Canadian web entrepreneur who asked not to be named. That Canadian also left Havana because of Cuba's lack of interest in attracting foreign investors.

Cuba's changing priorities seem to be raising questions about the future of the island's e-commerce sector, which was made possible by tech-savvy foreigners like Steve Marshall and one-time competitor Robert Sajo, creator of the Cuban government's commercial portal www.cubaweb.cu.

Eren said that Marshall could have prevented his travel service from being designated a "national of Cuba" had he also conducted online travel bookings to other countries like the Bahamas or Jamaica.

According to an OFAC press release issued in December 2004, Marshall's firm became a "national of Cuba" because it was "the official tour operator representing the Cuban government's Agencia Receptora Ecotur SA, one of Cuba's largest local agencies."

Marshall's inclusion on the SDN list may seem overblown to those who know him personally, since he only engaged in online travel bookings, and because the SDN list also cites nefarious people linked to drug-trafficking rings and terrorist groups like al-Qaeda.

Meanwhile, a businessman engaged in his own e-commerce venture told CubaNews that most of Marshall's domains are registered at the U.S.-based http://enomcentral.com.

"So, if OFAC did not shut him down, an internal review of Enom could have found Stephen to be a client it needed to distance itself from and shut him down from the domain registration side," said the businessman, who asked not to be identified for this article.

OFAC spokesman Andrew DeSouza would not confirm or deny reports his agency had a direct hand in shutting down Marshall's sites.

In an email to CubaNews, DeSouza said "the regulations administered by OFAC generally prohibit persons subject to U.S. jurisdiction from providing services to those on the SDN list."

Therefore, Enom would certainly have been subject to legal pressure from OFAC regarding Marshall's sites. Said Eren: "If his sites were based elsewhere, that wouldn't be the case."

This would explain the continued existence of Marshall's companion site, www.digitalpanorama. net.

According to CubaNews sources, that site has an IP location in the Bahamas--effectively shielding it from legal action by OFAC or any other U.S. government agency.

Details: Stephen Marshall, Managing Director, Viajes Tenerife VIP/Estival Tour Las Americas, Local 1ro, Centro Comercial Villa Blanca, Av. de Austria 36, San Eugenio Alto, Costa Adeje 38660 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain. Tel: [phone]. Fax: [phone]. Email: [e-mail].