MIAMI — The possibility that Cubans in South Florida and elsewhere outside the island might soon be able to invest in and own businesses in Cuba may amount to little more than an invitation and a fantasy.

Standing in the way of any investments and businesses that Cuban exiles may want to start on the island, experts say, are U.S. government sanctions and the massive — and tortuously slow — Cuban government bureaucracy.

On March 16, Cuba’s minister of foreign trade, Oscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, said Havana would be allowing Cubans living abroad to invest in and own businesses on the island. He said those investments could go into sectors previously off-limits to Cuba’s private sector, including the country’s crumbling infrastructure.

But the biggest obstacle Cuban Americans would face, people familiar with Cuba’s bureaucracy say, is the absence of a legal framework that offers guarantees to investors. In Cuba there is no rule of law that allows cases to be judged by an independent court, laws are frequently changed, and confiscation is part of the legal code and can be used as a tool of repression, lawyers knowledgeable about Cuban laws told the Miami Herald.

When Pérez-Oliva, who also serves as deputy prime minister, told NBC that Cuba is “open” to doing business with U.S. companies and with Cubans residing in the United States and their descendants, for some it offered a ray of hope. At the same time, many exiles immediately noted that Pérez-Oliva did not specify on what terms Cubans abroad could invest or what the requirements would be.

Pérez-Oliva gave a longer interview that same day Cuban TV program Mesa Redonda, Round Table. He said that Cubans living abroad could participate in or own businesses in Cuba, whether private or in partnership with government companies, without needing to reside in the country, under a Cuban law that includes a category called “investors and businesses.”

But his explanations did not allay the fears of entrepreneurs and investors who do not see how they could have their rights enforced in Cuba as owners of small enterprises or of larger projects aimed, for example, at improving the country’s infrastructure.

Law not yet in force

Cuban lawyer Eloy Viera Cañive, who practiced law on the island for six years before moving to Canada, said that the migratio law Pérez-Oliva mentioned was approved by the country’s national assembly in 2024 but has never been published in the official government Gazette, so it cannot be considered to be in force.

The Foreign Investment Law of 2014, another statute Pérez-Oliva cited, is in force, but for a long time the Cuban government said it did not allow residents abroad to invest in Cuba.

“Until one day they changed their mind and said it did, although they did not ‘promote’ the investment of Cubans outside Cuba,” Viera Cañive said.

The Cuban government will continue using the same regulations it has long applied at its discretion, he added. The government itself acknowledges that only two businesses with capital from Cubans residing abroad have been established in Cuba under the foreign investment law, Viera Cañive said.

The lawyer also pointed to the lack of clarity about the requirements to acquire the status of “resident investor” or businessperson that Pérez-Oliva mentioned. “That shows there are no clear rules in Cuba, and that they can change at any time, as has always happened,” he said.

Changing institutions

The problem is institutional and very difficult to change, Viera Cañive said.

“The guarantee provided by Cuban law to an investor is the possibility of appearing before a court that is not independent,” said Viera Cañive, a legal consultant at the media outlet El Toque.

He gave the hypothetical example of a Miami businessman who has a dispute with another private company on the island or with a state company.

The conflict would have to be resolved through an arbitration system that exists only within Cuban commercial courts, in the Sala de lo Mercantil, which is led by judges who are part of an institutional structure that is not independent.

“That court system answers to the Cuban state, which operates through directives. When the Cuban regime says: ‘This is what must be decided,’ that is what is decided, and that is the main problem for investors,” Viera Cañive said.

Changing laws and confiscation

Attorney Laritza Diversent pointed to the frequent amendments to Cuban laws as a major warning sign for investors. The small private sector allowed on the island over the past few years, along with self-employment, have experienced several legislative changes since 2019, she noted. The laws so far have been modified to increase state control.

Diversent heads the legal organization Cubalex, which operates as an independent, non-governmental entity that offers free legal assistance to citizens, documents human rights abuses. She stressed that confiscation of property is present in the Cuban legal code.

That single word can send a chill down the spine of any entrepreneur in Miami, where there are descendants of so many families whose businesses were confiscated by Castro revolution, including small businesses expropriated in 1968.

Confiscation of businesses can be carried out for any suspicion of influence peddling, Diversent said, listing one of the reasons the regime may claim.

It was not until the 1990s, when the island lived through what it called as the “special period” after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of its subsidies, that the Cuban government again allowed self-employment and some trades to meet basic needs in the midst of the economic crisis. In 2021, amid a deep COVID-19 pandemic-related crisis, the regime approved the existence of small and medium enterprises along with private non-agricultural cooperatives.

“Confiscation has been used as a tool of political and economic control,” said Viera Cañive, citing recent examples of coercion against Cuban entrepreneurs.

If the owner of a small private enterprise sets prices outside of those established by the government, it can mean the loss of merchandise through confiscation, Viera Cañive said. It is what is called a “forced sale,” in which the government sells that product at the price it deems appropriate.

Jail for entrepreneurs

The island’s business record includes several cases of Cuban entrepreneurs — some of whom had returned to the island from the United States — and foreigners who have been convicted under Cuban law. It does not matter that an entrepreneur had ties to the leadership or was a friend of Fidel Castro, like Chilean Max Marambio, who in 2011 was sentenced in absentia by a Cuban court to 20 years for fraud and forging bank documents, in a case that involved a former Cuban minister. By then Marambio, who was living abroad at the time of his sentencing, had done business with the Cuban government for 16 years and was its partner in the food company Río Zaza.

Canadian businessman Cy Tokmakjian was arrested in 2011, and in 2014 was sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of bribery and economic crimes. His company’s transport businesses in Cuba, Tokmakjian Group, were confiscated. Cuban authorities demanded $55 million for his release, Lee Hacker, Tokmakjian Group’s vice president of finance, said at the time. Tokmakjian was freed in 2015 after serving three years.

One of the best known cases involved Cuban-American entrepreneur Frank Cuspinera Medina, owner of what became known as the “Cuban Costco,” the Diplomarket supergrocry store, which opened in 2022 on the outskirts of Havana. Cuspinera Medina was arrested in June 2024 under informal accusations of tax evasion, currency trafficking and money laundering. A year later he issued a public letter from the infamous Combinado del Este prison in Havana, where he denounced psychological torture and judicial manipulation.

“They have fabricated a case without grounds to justify the expropriation of my business,” Cuspinera Medina wrote, saying his arrest was a way to halt the growth of the private sector.

For multiple reasons, authorities can open an investigation into an entrepreneur, confiscate his business and assets, and freeze funds so he cannot remove them from the country, Diversent said.

The Cuban state cannot be sued as in other countries, she said, calling the very notion “Saturday night movie stuff.” An entrepreneur can’t count on the Cuban judicial system to defend his interests inside the country, whether foreign or national.

Another important point: Under current Cuban laws, those who left Cuba must reenter the island using a Cuban passport, and no other citizenship is recognized, meaning they will be treated as Cubans by the island’s authorities, subject to the island’s law with no recourse to foreign consular services.

Viera Cañive believes one reason the migration law has not come into force is that it is part of a legislative package that includes a new law that allows Cubans who live abroad to abandon their island citizenship. Those Cubans could then enter the island with the passport of the country in which they have become citizens.

“The regime does not want to lose political control over its emigres,” he said.

Land to farm and urbanize

Another concern for foreign investors: the obstacles to acquiring land for urban development. The deterioration of buildings, the constant collapses that free up space for new construction, and the poor state of infrastructure all cry out for investment

But it is no easy task, because all developed land is officially government property. “A building can be privately owned, but the land, once the building disappears, is state property,” Viera Cañive said.

There is very little land in urban areas in Cuba that can be allocated for construction. There are some vacant lots and very small parcels in private hands, in which deals could be negotiated with their owners, the lawyer said.

The first thing that is needed, he said, is an update of the land registry to know which plots can be used for construction.

Other exiles may at some point want to return to Cuba and buy a farm to contribute to the island’s agricultural development. That is another area in which dreams smack into the reality of Cuban state, which owns 80% of all arable land.

“It would be necessary to amend the constitution, which says that ownership of land is irreversible, that it can never return to private hands once it is state-owned,” Diversent said.

The model of property ownership in Cuba would have to change, Viera Cañive said. The government has only granted parcels of three caballerías — about 100 acres — as long-term leases.

Modernizing the agricultural system and the goal of getting land to produce is also hindered by legal limitations. The state has the preferential right to buy land first at a price lower than the informal market. And inheritance laws are tricky: If farmers want to leave land to their children, only those kids who have worked the land for a number of years are allowed to inherit.

“It’s not worth mechanizing parcels of three caballerías,” Viera Cañive said. “You need extensive land to be productive.”

Another obstacle for entrepreneurs and investors is that, in Cuba, all banks are owned by the state. That allows the government to control banking policy and to prevent companies from taking their money out of the country. Since November, hundreds of foreign companies in Cuba have been unable to withdraw or transfer abroad funds from their Cuban bank accounts.

Open doors?

Since Pérez-Oliva announced that Cuba would be open to investments from Cubans abroad and their descendants, both the Cuban government and the Trump administration have made comments that could complicate any effort at relieving tensions. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week that the measures announced by Cuba “are not drastic enough” to solve the island’s economic problems and that Cuba needs a change in leadership.

Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel then adopted a belligerent tone in response to comments by President Donald Trump that he could “take” the island at any time. “In the worst of scenarios, Cuba has one certainty: any external aggressor will encounter an impregnable resistance,” Díaz-Canel said.

From the U.S. side, entrepreneurs who want to have businesses in Cuba would need authorization from the U.S. Treasury and Commerce departments, which enforce the U.S. embargo on the island.

Under the Helms-Burton Act, passed by Congress in 1996, lifting the embargo is conditioned on the existence of a democratic government in Cuba, and no president can lift it until that requirement is met.

Viera Cañive said that no matter what a minister has said, it remains precarious for Cuban Americans to invest on the island until there are significant changes in Cuban law.

“They must be clear that in Cuba there is no legal context or institutions that offer guarantees,” he said. “It is not enough for a minister to come and say they are going to open the doors. Institutionally, nothing has changed.”

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