Mediterranean Shipping Co (MSC) has become the latest shipowner dragged into US courts over its dealings in Cuba.

In the latest lawsuit filed by the Blanco Rosell family, led by 93-year-old Odette Blanco de Fernandez, the Swiss company was accused of running ships directly to the island, routing Cuba-bound cargoes through other countries and maintaining a port agent in the country to facilitate the shipments.

The complaint, filed in the US federal court for the Southern District of Florida, was brought on 22 September under the Helms-Burton Act.

The law was passed in 1996 to strengthen the US blockade against Cuba. Title III of the law allows those who had their property appropriated by the Cuban government following the 1959 revolution to seek damages by those deemed to be trafficking in that property.

Every US president since the law was passed suspended title III until Donald Trump in 2019.

De Fernandez's four brothers — all deceased — once held a 70-year concession to build port facilities in Mariel, west of Havana.

She and more than a dozen of her nieces and nephews had previously sued containership giants AP Moller-Maersk and CMA CGM as well as domestic shipping companies Seaboard Marine and Crowley Maritime for sending ships to the port.

In their latest lawsuit, the family said MSC routed cargoes from ports in Florida to Cuba through the Bahamas and Panama, and sent the 2,468-teu MSC Nadriely (built 1998) to Mariel 14 times in 2016 and 2017.

MSC allegedly further trafficked in the property through its agent in Cuba, Mapor Habana, which the family further alleges did business with Cuban government-owned agencies Terminal de Contenedores del Mariel and Almacenes Universales.

Almacenes Universales' parent — Grupo de Administracion Empresarial — was sanctioned by the US government in 2020.

Under the law, successful litigants are entitled to the market value of the property or the value as determined by a special master, plus treble damages.

Geneva-based MSC did not immediately return a request for comment.