16 months in jail without being formally charged, The Briton who languished in a Cuban jail after being accused of spying
Stephen Purvis has returned to Britain after spending 16 months in a Cuban jail on false spying and fraud charges. He speaks to Colin Freeman about the ordeal.
It was not until three weeks before his trial last month that his Cuban lawyer finally got the charge sheet against him – an 8,000-page document that Mr Purvis was not allowed to see. He was convicted, though, only of the minor charge of conducting illegal currency transactions – something, he says, the central bank has authorised for years.
As for money,
Coral is now contemplating another tussle with the Cuban courts – this time a lawsuit to regain £10.6 million in confiscated company assets.
Good luck with that.
Purvis’s company, Coral Capital, was behind the Bellomonte Golf and Country Club development. It’s not the first foreign company to get screwed out of its money by the Communist regime.
And it won’t be the last.
