A Crack Appears in Cuba’s Dictatorship: A regime leak to the Miami Herald reveals that the Havana elite is hoarding billions

By Mary Anastasia O’Grady. Excerpts:

"Bank accounts belonging to a company owned by Cuba’s armed forces are bulging with billions of dollars, the Miami Herald reported last week"

"the military’s huge conglomerate, Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. or GAESA, keeps its “financial information secret and even guards its accounts from government comptrollers.”"

"we now know that hundreds of millions of dollars earned by companies on the island that should go to public services end up in the accounts of GAESA or its subsidiaries."

"The military may own GAESA on paper, but the Castro family and its allies are widely believed to be the company’s beneficiaries. Greedy rich Cubans treat GAESA as their property. Until his death in 2022, Raúl Castro’s former son-in-law, Luis Alberto López-Calleja, ran GAESA. When a three-star army general asked for an audit of GAESA in April 2021, he was arrested."

"one of GAESA’s companies, Gaviota, which is in the hotel business, “is sitting on about $4.3 billion in its bank accounts,” according the documents. In other words, the “Cuban military has more than enough money on hand to cover both dire needs.” (electrical grid and medical supplies)

"by 2022 the conglomerate controlled 70% of the economy, up from less than 23% in 2016."

" it was Raúl Castro’s 2016 decision to give Cuba’s Banco Financiero Internacional to GAESA that allowed the company, by 2022, to take “control of 95% of the country’s finances,”"

"Banking has given GAESA control over dollars and euros that enter the country through official channels. Emigration has been a boon. At one point during the Biden presidency, the regime was charging $5,000 for a two-hour charter flight to Nicaragua"

"An estimated one million people left the island in recent years through various routes, and that means higher dollar remittances"

"the company “has been holding on to hundreds of millions of dollars that enter the island yearly.”"

"Havana collects a contract fee from host governments for its medical “missions” but pays the healthcare workers only a fraction, pocketing the rest."

"after-cost return to Cuba since 2009 is nearly $70 billion." 

"GAESA keeps “its money separate from government coffers,”"

"it has “effectively stripped other ministries of the resources to pay for healthcare, education, garbage collection, and even repairing the country’s creaking electrical grid.”"