Miami Herald
Sat, Aug. 28, 2004
CUBA | TRADE EMBARGO
Doctor fined $70,000 for buying Cuban dolphins
An American physician is facing a $70,000 fine after
buying dolphins from Cuba for exhibition in aquatic parks in the
Caribbean.
BY CHARLES D. SHERMAN
Special to the Herald
An American physician who bought wild dolphins from Cuba
for aquatic parks in the Caribbean is facing a $70,000 fine by the U.S.
Treasury Department for violating the trade embargo against the communist
nation.
''I've admitted the thing to the government and am paying
a settlement.'' Dr. Graham Simpson, now living in Reno, Nev., said this
week. He said he was ''negotiating a fine of up to $70,000'' but declined
to comment further.
The Herald first reported in February 2002 that Simpson, a
naturalized U.S. citizen from South Africa, was under federal
investigation for buying six Cuban dolphins for water parks he owned in
the Caribbean islands of Anguilla and Antigua.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
In an interview at the time, Simpson said he paid a broker
in the Dominican Republic for the animals but acknowledged they had come
from Cuba and that he had visited officials at Havana's national aquarium.
He said he traveled to Cuba on a British passport and paid
$45,000 each for the dolphins.
The Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control, which
enforces the embargo, refused comment on the case, citing privacy
concerns.
Simpson, 53, has long been the target of a campaign by
animal rights activists in the United States and Canada. Cuba is the
world's largest exporter of wild dolphins, according to the United
Nations, and the animal rights activists have grasped the U.S. embargo as
a tool to crimp the trade.
The dolphins that Simpson bought were put to work in
high-end resort destinations in the Leeward islands east of Puerto Rico.
Two years ago, when asked about having possibly violated
the trade embargo, Simpson said: ``I thought of myself as a British
citizen living for the last three years in Anguilla, which has no law
against buying from Cuba. It really didn't occur to me this might be a
problem.''
Dolphin defenders have focused on the Simpson case to
highlight the dangers they see in the exploitation of the marine mammals.
One of the leaders in the effort to bring Simpson to account is Gwen
McKenna, a 50-year-old Toronto housewife.
''This substantial fine handed down to Simpson brings to
an end years of hard work, gathering information and providing it to the
Office of Foreign Assets Control, and pressuring them directly and through
the media to prosecute Americans purchasing Cuban dolphins,'' McKenna
said.
``But Simpson is just the tip of the iceberg. There are a
number of other Americans hiding behind foreign corporate veils who have
purchased large numbers of Cuban dolphins.''
`FINE IS A GOOD THING'
Ric O'Barry of Miami, a former Miami Seaquarium Flipper
trainer who several years ago began trying to find ways to return dolphins
to the wild, is now a consultant for One Voice, an animal protection
society based in France.
He, McKenna and several activists on Anguilla and Antigua
have worked closely together in the campaign against Simpson. ''The fine
is a good thing,'' O'Barry said.
''The real value is that it will send a message to the
other U.S. citizens that are doing business with Cuba,'' he said.
A number of aspects of the dolphin business anger animal
rights activists. They say dolphin hunters chase the creatures to the
point of exhaustion before using nets in violent captures that can
severely injure or even drown the animal.
Beyond what they see as the immorality in the removal of
individual dolphins from their pods, or families, the activists say the
animals face food deprivation during their training and confinement
sometimes in tanks not much larger than a public swimming pool.
Simpson and other aquatic park owners counter these
arguments by saying they provide a valuable service for customers who want
to play with the animals and learn more about them.
At many dolphin encounter parks, including Miami's
Seaquarium, customers can pay upwards of $150 for a half hour in a pool
with dolphins. Park owners say they include educational information about
dolphins as part of the experience.
Cuba and Russia, according to U.N. studies, are the
world's leading exporters of dolphins.
The countries are immune to publicity campaigns against
the trade, and a healthy, young dolphin can fetch between $40,000 and
$70,000 on the international market.
MAJOR SUPPLIER
In the past decade, Cuba has supplied more than 100
dolphins to burgeoning swim parks in the Caribbean, Mexico and Latin
America, according to U.N. figures.
Earlier this year, Simpson and his wife sold their
business on Anguilla to Dolphin Discovery of Cancun, a company run by
several Americans with six bases of operation across the Caribbean.
According to the latest U.N. figures, Cuba has supplied 33
of the animals to Dolphin Discovery. Animal rights activists have raised
the case with the Treasury.
Go on to The Brutal
Beast
Return to 29 August 2004 Issue
Return to Newsletters
** Fair Use Notice**
This document may contain copyrighted material, use of which has not been
specifically authorized by the copyright owners. I believe that this
not-for-profit, educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use of the
copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright
Law). If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your
own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright
owner.
