Cuban Restaurant in Belfast Faces Payment Delays Due to Name Trigger

A Cuban-themed restaurant in Belfast, Northern Ireland, went weeks without receiving over £7,000 in payments from Deliveroo. The delay stemmed from a Citibank compliance review that the owner suspects was triggered by the words "Cuban" and "Factory" in the business's name.

The incident forced the restaurant to temporarily halt orders through the platform and cut back on working hours. Cuban government representatives later used the situation to criticize U.S. sanctions against the island nation.

Carlos Argüelles Leblanch, the owner of Cuban Sandwich Factory, told BBC News NI that payments from Deliveroo ceased around mid-June. He believes the restaurant's name may have acted as a "trigger" for banking compliance systems.

"Cuban Sandwich Factory has no connection to Cuba. It's a UK-registered company, and we have no ties to the Cuban government," Argüelles Leblanch clarified.

Born in Cuba and living in Northern Ireland since 1998, Argüelles Leblanch opened the restaurant in 2012 and began collaborating with Deliveroo two years later.

The issue was particularly challenging for the business, as orders from Deliveroo account for 20% to 30% of its sales, with roughly half of the staff's working hours relying on these transactions.

With more than £7,000 pending, the owner decided to suspend Deliveroo orders, opting to fulfill only phone orders for pickup. Had the debt continued to accumulate, he stated, the restaurant "would undoubtedly have to close."

Citibank confirmed that the funds were eventually released, but avoided directly linking the incident to U.S. sanctions against Cuba.

"The matter required a necessary compliance review, which has been completed, and the payments have been processed," a bank spokesperson explained, noting that the issue couldn't "be directly attributed to an administrative error or a sanctions-related problem."

Argüelles Leblanch had experienced a similar problem during Trump's first term. At that time, payments were suspended for "three or four months," and he had to prove his residency in Northern Ireland to resolve the issue.

"And now it's happening again," he lamented.

The entrepreneur doesn't believe there's a deliberate action against his establishment. Instead, he blames the control systems used to detect potential Cuba-related operations.

"I don’t think it’s someone sitting there just attacking me; it’s a system, and the system is created against Cuba," he stated.

The U.S. maintains extensive sanctions on Cuba, and in 2016, the Trump administration tightened several measures against the Cuban regime. U.S. financial institutions must enforce controls to prevent prohibited transactions, though Citibank did not confirm these restrictions were the cause of the restaurant's payment block.

The Cuban Embassy in the UK later capitalized on the episode, sharing the case with the slogan "Born in Cuba. Bread in Belfast. Blocked by Washington."

The Cuban government's representation framed the situation as a consequence of U.S. sanctions, despite Citibank not publicly establishing this causal link and confirming that, after their compliance review, the payments were released.

For Argüelles Leblanch, regardless of what triggered the hold, the damage to his small business was real.

"It wasn’t intentional, but it’s not fair," he concluded.