Trump ‘flouted ban on trade with Cuba’, claims Clinton

HILLARY Clinton said that Donald Trump may have broken the law by violating the US trade embargo with Cuba, slamming her rival as dishonest and willing to put his interests before the country.

Mrs Clinton said Mr Trump’s business activities in Cuba in the 1990s “appear to violate US law, certainly flout American foreign policy”, as she accused him of misleading voters.

The Democratic nominee highlighted a Newsweek story which found that Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts executives secretly conducted tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of business in the country with Mr Trump’s knowledge despite a strict trade ban.

“We have laws in our country,” Mrs Clinton told reporters aboard her campaign plane. She said Mr Trump “deliberately flouted” the law and put “his personal and business interests ahead of the laws and the values and the policies of the United States of America”.

In a tweet that linked to the Newsweek report, Mrs Clinton accused Mr Trump of acting “against our nation’s interest, all so he could line his own pockets”.

The magazine studied documents that show the Trump company spent at least $68,000 (£52,000) in 1998 in Cuba when expenditure in the Caribbean country was illegal without US government approval.

The payment by Trump Hotels came just before the New York business mogul launched his first bid for the White House, seeking the nomination of the Reform Party.

Newsweek reported that the company did not spend the money directly, opting instead to funnel the funds through a consulting firm – Seven Arrows Investment and Development Corp – with Mr Trump’s knowledge to make it appear as if the spending were part of a charitable effort.

A former Trump executive who spoke to the magazine on condition of anonymity said the company did not obtain a government licence for its spending before the trip.

Facing questions about the report, Mr Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway all but acknowledged his company has violated the embargo.

“As I understand from the story, they paid money in 1998,” she said on the ABC show The View.

However, Mr Trump ultimately “decided not to invest there”, she added, and has remained “very critical” of Cuba and the Castro regime.

Mr Trump’s dealings in Cuba could affect the vote in the all-important battleground state of Florida, where more than a million Cuban-Americans live.