Feds fine Travelocity.com for Cuba trips by Notme

Travelocity.com was fined by the federal regulators for booking trips between U.S. and Cuba after they violated a 45 years old embargo. It's a first time when an online travel agency is fined by the feds.They paid earlier this month about $182,750 for settling a complaint brought by the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, after the agency violated prohibition almost 1500 times between January 1998 and April 2004.U.S. Treasury Department declared that Travelocity.com "provided travel-related services in which Cuba or Cuban nationals had an interest by arranging air travel and hotel reservations to, from, with or within Cuba without an OFAC license."A spokesman for Travelocity, Joel Frey said in an e-mail Wednesday that the company hasn't applied for a license and it doesn't intend to do so. He said that the trips to Cube were unintentionally permitted to be booked by consumers online because of some technical failures from several years ago and it's just now settled with OFAC."In no way did the company intend to allow bookings for trips to Cuba and the company has fully cooperated with OFAC and implemented corrective measures."The spokeswoman of U.S. Treasury, Molly Millerwise said that any individual or business that violates Cuban sanction will face criminal penalties, but she didn't specified if the investigation of Travelocity had been closed.

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070815/ap_on_hi_te/travelocity_cuba;_ylt=AijdcJpkbeeN2HpJj5zF6Fis0NUE

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