HAVANA, Cuba. – In the context of the recent ExpoCaribe International Fair, held in late June in Santiago de Cuba, Gabriel Bottino, Deputy Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Cuba, announced the launch of a call for proposals for a new financial support project aimed at “new economic actors” linked to the agri-food sector in eastern Cuba. According to a note published in Granma, the initiative is expected to be extended in the coming months to the central regions of the country, as well as to three other “projects of a national nature.”
In short, the initiative—financed with funds from French Cooperation in Cuba and managed by the so-called Articulated Platform for Integrated Territorial Development (PADIT), led among others by the Ministry of Economy and Planning, the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, the Physical Planning Institute, and provincial governments under the guidance of the Communist Party—would offer, in addition to access to foreign markets, a substantial financial contribution, with amounts that can reach up to $40,000 per selected project.
Amid the deep crisis the country is experiencing, the news might seem encouraging, at least for entrepreneurs with good ideas but no mechanisms to finance them. However, previous negative experiences with similar calls, together with the wave of closures of non-state businesses caused by the government’s constant harassment of private initiatives that lack its political backing, raise suspicions about the ultimate destination of those funds. It would not be the first time that money arriving from abroad under the pretext of “development aid” ends up in the hands of the same “fortunate” few as always.
For example, four years ago, on August 25, 2021, the Central Bank of Cuba announced on its website a similar call for “agricultural development,” in coordination with the Ministry of Finance and Prices. At that time, a fund of 1.8 billion pesos (about $70 million at the official exchange rate of the moment) was mentioned, to be executed in 2021. Most of the money came from various development programs, especially from the governments of China, Germany, and Spain, the United Nations (UNDP), and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), coordinated by PADIT.
Although it was specified that the fund would be intended mainly for “selected enterprises” based on their performance and impact on “priority productions,” especially rice, plantains, cassava, and fruit crops, according to information provided to CubaNet by members and representatives of some of the organizations contributing to PADIT—who requested their identities be protected—the data reflected in the UNDP’s 2021 Annual Report on PADIT’s performance during that year, as well as in the 2021/2022 Annual Work Plan, show that less than half of the funds went to entities of the Ministry of Agriculture.
Curiously, only one private project—classified as a Local Development Project (LDP)—managed to benefit, through the local government of the province where it is based, from some 40 million dollars.
This information was also confirmed to CubaNet, on condition of anonymity, by an official of the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC), as well as by a former employee of the mipyme in question.
The substantial sum was allocated to Agroindustrial Media Luna S.R.L., based in Ciego de Ávila, owned by Fernando Javier Albán Torres, who is directly linked to the case involving the dismissal of former Minister of Economy Alejandro Gil Fernández in February 2024, for the alleged crime of corruption.
Fernando Javier Albán Torres, who was reportedly included in the investigation process because of his connection to Gil Fernández, served as a leader of the University Student Federation (FEU) in Camagüey between 1999 and 2004. In 2002, he was among the main repressors involved in the expulsion of two medical students who had signed the Varela Project. He was a personal friend of Alejandro Gil (and allegedly his front man) since their youth. Both worked in the Commercial Department of the agroindustrial company Río Zaza, owned by Chilean businessman Max Marambio, who later ended his relationship with Cuba and the Castros after being expropriated and accused of corruption.
“Media Luna was the only small private enterprise that received financing, and it did so because of its relationship with (Alejandro) Gil,” said the Central Bank of Cuba official interviewed by CubaNet, adding: “The call for proposals was a formality, because it is required by those who provide the money to Cuba (…). Hundreds of projects applied—many from cooperatives and also from non-state enterprises—all of them met the requirements, some more so than Media Luna, which already since 2019 had machines donated and installed by China, plus others that had belonged to Río Zaza. But the decision had already been made. In fact, on that occasion it was done in coordination with the Ministry of Finance in order to supposedly keep the Ministry of Economy (then headed by Gil) at arm’s length, even though it is the main body in charge of PADIT,” the official stated.
Media Luna S.R.L. was the first Local Development Project (LDP) in Ciego de Ávila to receive approval as a medium-sized enterprise in 2021, and the first private micro, small, and medium-sized enterprise (mipyme) in the province. It was thus incorporated by notarial deed on October 18, 2021, although as early as September 29 of that same year the Ministry of Economy and Planning (MEP) had already included it among the first 30 mipymes approved in the country. However, it had already been receiving benefits as an LDP since June 2016, at the request of the Council of Ministers and at the behest of the Ministry of Economy and Planning.
That same year, in December, Alejandro Gil Fernández, who was serving as First Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Finance and Prices, was appointed First Deputy Minister of the MEP, and a year later became Minister and Vice Prime Minister of the Government.
In July 2022, Agroindustrial Media Luna S.R.L. was also among the first to benefit from a package of measures promoted by Gil Fernández to increase foreign-currency revenues and exports in both state and non-state enterprises. This allowed both Albán Torres’s mipyme and other companies managed by local governments through cooperation programs integrated into PADIT to obtain greater external revenues while at the same time justifying the funds received by disguising them as export income.
“They needed (referring specifically to Media Luna S.R.L.) to channel the money from the funds (granted by PADIT as investment) as export revenue, and also to get money out of Cuba under the pretext of imports—mainly to the United States,” said a source from the Institute for Research on the Cuban Economy, an institution associated with PADIT, speaking on condition of anonymity. The source added:
“Before (2021), external funds were delivered directly to the projects that UNDP, or even COSUDE itself, wanted to support, but later it was decided to create an intermediary entity, articulated with local governments and the Ministry of Economy and Planning. (…) UNDP only verifies that the aid is delivered to local governments, and its oversight depends on the reports from those governments. They have to believe what they are told, and the governments themselves make sure that the people in charge of the Local Development Projects are trustworthy (…). They rarely approve one they cannot control, or they create them themselves and appoint a cadre (a PCC official) to run them as if they were truly private companies,” the source explained.
In the same province, Ciego de Ávila, Lázaro V., the owner of a small company that produces animal feed from agricultural waste, recounts how—despite having spent several years requesting financial support from the provincial government, based on the considerable number of people he employs and the positive impact his business has both in his community and beyond—he has never managed to obtain a single cent. This is because his venture, even though it meets the requirements, has not been classified as a “Local Development Project” (LDP), which would make it eligible for significant PADIT funding.
In 2021, other “ventures” of interest to local governments, and therefore classified as LDPs, did benefit from development funds. One of them, located in the Playa municipality in Havana, was visited in May 2021 by Miguel Díaz-Canel and, for that reason, was widely covered by the official press.
“Every year I submit the request to the government and nothing comes of it. My business is unique in the area and important because of its production volume and the number of people it employs, but all I’ve received are constant inspections and unjustified fines, as if they were trying to wear me down and force me to shut down. (…) Less than a year ago a general showed up and set up a farm right next to here, worked by soldiers dressed as civilians, not even from the YWT (Youth Labor Army) (…) it produces a bit of cassava and sweet potato for the FAR (Revolutionary Armed Forces). (…) In less than a month, and without even producing yet, with the land overgrown with weeds, they turned it into a Local Development Project. They say that dump—where the general maybe comes once a month—is a project sponsored by Italians. Even Díaz-Canel has come to visit it. That’s when they bring in the soldiers, clear the weeds, paint a bit, and pretend they’re working,” Lázaro told us.
The Other Mafia Behind PADIT
It was a Local Development Project (LDP) linked to the Antonio Núñez Jiménez Foundation (FANJ) and run as a personal venture by Liliana Núñez Véliz, daughter of the Cuban adventurer and explorer who, as a Commander of the Revolution, also held various posts in the Cuban government after 1959.
According to official UNDP reports, the FANJ has been widely benefited by PADIT and was among the first LDPs approved in Cuba. Today, from what was once Núñez Jiménez’s residence—a mansion in the Siboney neighborhood—not only are perfumery businesses and natural products for beauty treatments promoted, but luxury spaces and rooms are also rented to foreigners. This business also includes the rental of Villa Palmera, the former mansion of Chilean businessman Max Marambio, husband of Lupe María Núñez Véliz, Liliana’s sister, who was also married to Colonel José Luis Padrón of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT).
Padrón, in the 1980s, was president of the Institute of Tourism, founder of the trading company CIMEX, and of more than one company registered in Panama. His cousin, Amado Padrón, was executed in 1990 after being tried for the same charges as General Arnaldo Ochoa.
Max Marambio, owner of the agroindustrial company Río Zaza, was expropriated and expelled from Cuba in 2010, a year after Raúl Castro officially took the reins of power. Neither his friendship with Fidel Castro nor his marriage to the daughter of a “historical figure,” nor his record as a member of Salvador Allende’s security detail and an officer in the Cuban dictatorship’s secret services, mattered.
The FANJ’s representation in Pinar del Río is currently headed by Carlos Aldana, son of Carlos Aldana, who was the ideological secretary of the Communist Party and chief of Raúl Castro’s office in the Ministry of the Armed Forces.
Leaders, former leaders, friends, and front men—accomplices and loyalists—appointed and dismissed, are recycled again and again, personally or through their children and families, within a tangled, mafia-like structure that functions as a massive black hole in the Cuban economy, through which millions of dollars of foreign aid to Cuba disappear.
The restaurants of the Perdomo DiLella family, the Flora and Fauna farms, the FANJ’s ventures and mansions, the sexual diversity, gender, and women’s empowerment programs of the FMC and CENESEX, Media Luna S.R.L., the Office of the Historian of Havana—now in the hands of the military and directed by Perla Rosales, daughter of General Ulises Rosales del Toro—are not exceptions but only a small part of a much larger corruption scheme, entirely controlled by the Cuban regime through front men and “trusted people,” all belonging to or loyal to a power elite that, in many ways, functions like a mafia.
Within this scheme are more or less well-known businesses such as Gaia S.U.R.L., a mipyme with LDP status, registered in 2022 by Lisa Titolo Castro, Raúl Castro’s granddaughter; and several ventures managed by Cristina Lage Codorniú, not only due to her familial link to her father, Carlos Lage Dávila, former Cuban vice president, but especially to her brother, Carlos Lage Codorniú, currently a UNDP consultant in Cuba and a specialist in financing ventures and coordinating them with international cooperation mechanisms.
Political organizations such as the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) are also connected to PADIT and receive external funding. The same applies to the marine life project Bojeo a Cuba, supported by actions on climate change and its impact on island nations, promoted by the UN and financed by UNDP, the Global Environment Facility, and the Green Climate Fund, among others. These funds also flow to the Ministry of Tourism as well as other species and protected-area conservation projects, from which Flora y Fauna companies—run by Commander Guillermo García Frías and his family—take a large share. All of these initiatives are essentially sustained through international cooperation, especially funding from the European Union.
LDP and PADIT: Privileges of Castroism
According to the most recent list of mipymes updated by the Ministry of Economy and Planning (MEP)—which now exceeds 11,000 registered ventures from September 29, 2021, to date (although this number is not accurate, as the MEP does not provide updates on those that have been closed)—just under 140 active businesses and projects hold this classification, which almost automatically makes them eligible to receive funds from PADIT. PADIT is the only entity that, under the new legal norms approved in 2021 regarding international cooperation, channels and decides—through the local governments—where money from all international organizations contributing to the platform will go. This includes funds from UN development programs, foreign governments’ aid mechanisms with or without diplomatic representation on the island, and even from individual donors, foreign political parties, foundations, etc.
Being classified as an LDP by local governments and the MEP—as the main authorities responsible for PADIT—is therefore a significant privilege.
According to official information provided by UNDP on its website, PADIT is an Articulated Platform for Integrated Territorial Development, led by the MEP, the National Institute of Economic Research (INIE), the Physical Planning Institute (IPF), and the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment (MINCEX). It has the support of the United Nations Development Programme in Cuba (UNDP), the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (COSUDE), the Italian Agency for Development Cooperation (AICS), the ART International initiative (Articulation of International Networks), and the embassies of Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Canada. In addition, PADIT coordinates, receives, and distributes external funds from other countries and individuals.
However, it is the provincial governments that manage the PADIT program locally, with the participation of about 13 national advisory institutions, including the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), the Office of the Historian of Havana (OHH), the University of Havana, the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Environment (CITMA), and the Bank of Credit and Commerce (Bandec), as part of the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC).
Note:
For this investigative work, the following individuals were notified, contacted, and interviewed directly or via phone, internet, and email:
- Peter Sulzer, Resident Representative of COSUDE
- Mayra Espino Prieto, Cuban Officer of COSUDE
- Aymara Hernández Morales, UNDP
ARTÍCULO DE OPINIÓN Las opiniones expresadas en este artículo son de exclusiva responsabilidad de quien las emite y no necesariamente representan la opinión de CubaNet.
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