Office of the Historian

837.61351/1–2345

The Chargé in Cuba (Muccio) to the Secretary of State

[Extracts]
No. 8654
Habana, January 23, 1945.
[Received January 26.]

Sir: Supplementing the Embassy’s air mail despatch no. 5698 of January 14, 1944 (File 861.35)53 and previous correspondence concerning the global insurance of the 1943 and 1944 Cuban sugar crops, I have the honor to enclose a copy and translation of Decree no. 59 of January 9, 1945, promulgated in Official Gazette no. 25 of January 11, 1945, authorizing the Minister of Agriculture jointly with the Sugar Institute54 to contract for the global insurance of the 1945 sugar crop. As Decree no. 59 provides that all insurance companies authorized to operate in Cuba will be invited to participate in the contract, it appears that the monopoly held during 1943 and 1944 by Enrique Godoy of the insurance firm of Godoy–Sayan has been broken and that, therefore, there will be no repetition of the unethical practices which were employed by him to secure the contracts for those two years.55

Decree no. 59 also provides that the 1945 premium rate must not exceed that of 1944 and contains the very constructive provision that [Page 921] the contract must be submitted to the Commodity Credit Corporation for its approval after the sale of the 1945 Cuban sugar crop has been made.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Department will be kept informed of any further significant developments in connection with this matter.56

Respectfully yours,

For the Chargé d’Affaires a.i.:
Albert F. Nufer

Counselor of Embassy for Economic Affairs.
  1. Not printed.↩
  2. The Cuban Sugar Stabilization Institute.↩
  3. For information concerning efforts made by the United States to eliminate unethical practices in the insurance of the 1943 and 1944 sugar crops, see Foreign Relations, 1943, vol. vi, pp. 185 ff.↩
  4. Despatch 8785, February 12, 1945, from Habana, reported that local agents of foreign insurance companies later informed the Embassy at Habana that the global insurance of the 1945 sugar crop was arranged to the satisfaction of all insurance companies operating in Cuba, other than those connected with the Godoy–Sayan firm (837.61351/2–1245).↩