Entrepreneurship calls for revision of laws, attorney says
Cuba’s criminal laws will have to be updated along with the economy to deal with “new risks associated with these transformations,” Cuba’s news agency reports, citing a Sancti Spiritus attorney.
Pavel Peterssen, head of a collective legal firm in the city of Trinidad, told the National Information Agency (AIN) that “the harmonization of the laws with the current context is essential, because it impacts directly on the domestic order and national stability.”
The courts must be ready to deal with tax evasion and money laundering, because those crimes “contain the germ of organized crime,” Peterssen is quoted as saying, in an interview that appears to focus mostly on the self-employed entrepreneurs.
Known as “cuentapropistas,” self-employed businessmen are now producing growing amounts of valuable resources and raw materials “whose scarcity could generate criminal activity,” Peterssen said. An entrepreneur could be robbed by one of his own employees, yet there are no laws that cover such contingency, he pointed out.
Another issue that needs to be addressed is workers compensation for an entrepreneur’s employee who is hurt while at work, the attorney said. That kind of protection is not covered by any current law.
The concept of home “must be rethought” in the case of entrepreneurs, Peterssen told AIN, “because it is not only the place where [the entrepreneur] lives but also the site of a business activity” that involves strangers walking in and out. Legal protection is needed for both the hosts and the customers, in case of disturbances or complaints.
The rise of tourism not only brings hard currency to Cuba but also fosters “habits and concepts that are foreign to our national idiosyncrasy,” the attorney said. The tourism industry is “a latent market for drug trafficking and prostitution,” both of which must be dealt with by the courts.
According to AIN, “economic crime takes away from the efforts made by the State to count on essential resources, redistribute its revenues adequately and facilitate basic services that benefit everyone.”
Though the AIN article doesn’t say so, it strongly suggests that the government wants to keep close tabs on “cuentapropismo” from a legal standpoint.
