Beyonce and Jay-Z’s trip to Cuba for their fifth wedding anniversary has a pair of GOP lawmakers asking questions.
While American citizens can legally travel to Cuba if they obtain a “cultural exchange” license, all other travel is banned due to a 51-year-old trade embargo between the two countries. After photos of the power couple surfaced in Havana, showing them posing with locals and one with Jay-Z holding a cigar, two Florida congressmen aren’t so sure the couple was educating themselves.
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart, who both represent large Cuban-American populations within their Florida districts, sent a letter to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control on Friday, requesting information on the license the couple received to make the trip and who approved it, Reuters reported.
A permit, issued by the Treasury Department, is required for Americans to travel to Cuba, a state department official said on Monday, but he was "not aware" of any consultation on the pair's recent trip.
“Cuba’s tourism industry is wholly state-controlled; therefore, U.S. dollars spent on Cuban tourism directly fund the machinery of oppression that brutally represses the Cuban people,” Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart said in the letter.
“Despite the clear prohibition against tourism in Cuba, numerous press reports described the couple’s trip as tourism, and the Castro regime touted it as such in its propaganda.”
If the couple did not have a license to take the trip, they could face a fine. A spokeswoman at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana told the UK Independent that she did not know if one had been obtained.
Photo Credit: AP