According to a recent report in the Miami Herald and Diario de Cuba, “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.” On paper the Cuban military owns GAESA, but “the Castro family and its allies are widely believed to be the company’s beneficiaries.”
“[O]ne 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” [of maintaining the country’s electrical grid and providing medical supplies for its hospitals]. Instead it has “diverted the country’s badly needed hard currency to its enterprises.”
Another source of GAESA’s current wealth is the 2016 gift of Cuba’s Banco Financiero International to GAESA that has allowed the latter by 2022 to pursue “a silent strategy to take over the country’s wealth.’”
Another source of money for GAESA is expropriation of large sums of money paid by foreign governments for the services of Cuban medical personnel on missions to those countries.
======================
O’Grady, A Crack Appears in Cuba’s Dictatorship, W.S. J. (Jan. 5, 2025).
