Before becoming Cuba’s “president” in 2018, Miguel Díaz-Canel had spent decades carefully building his career within the regime’s machinery. He served as a student leader, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) in Villa Clara and Holguín, Minister of Higher Education, and later Vice President of the Council of State.
He was never known as a particularly charismatic or brilliant leader, but rather as a disciplined, discreet, and obedient party cadre, capable of surviving where other officials—perhaps better prepared or possessing greater political influence—eventually fell from favor. Díaz-Canel understood early on what his place was within the chain of command and became the ideal administrator for the Castros: someone with no visible ambitions to break with the system and sufficiently trustworthy to guarantee its continuity.
However, his rise to power marked a noticeable change in the public exposure and level of privilege enjoyed by his immediate family, something the Castros had traditionally kept discreet. For the first time, the presidential family began occupying visible roles both inside and outside Cuba. His wife, Lis Cuesta Peraza, started accompanying him regularly on international trips and at official events, while his stepson, Manuel Anido Cuesta, also appeared at official meetings, tours, and diplomatic functions around the world in the capacity of an adviser.
Images of the family in hotels and at dinners, wearing expensive clothing, drew criticism from many Cubans who questioned the use of public funds amid the country’s worst economic crisis in decades.
However, access to privileged treatment and exclusive settings has not been limited to the dictator’s wife and stepson. Other members of Díaz-Canel’s family circle have also quietly benefited for years from their political connections and from his rise within the regime.
Bearing the Díaz-Canel surname, some of his relatives have built political careers and tourism-related businesses in recent years. Others have found positions within foreign companies operating in Cuba.
One of the most striking cases is that of José de Jesús Díaz-Canel Rodríguez, a cousin of Miguel Díaz-Canel, who was identified in testimonies and court records—to which CubaNet obtained access—related to the tourism corruption scandals that shook Cuba a little more than a decade ago. Nevertheless, the official was never prosecuted or summoned by the Attorney General’s Office, even though other individuals involved ultimately received prison sentences.
Between January 2011 and June 2013, Havana courts prosecuted a series of corruption cases linked to tourism, foreign investment, and foreign trade. Foreign businessmen and Cuban officials were accused of crimes such as bribery, tax evasion, document forgery, currency trafficking, and fraud. Officially, the cases resulted in more than twenty prison sentences, along with dozens of fines, dismissals, and workplace expulsions.
Among the most high-profile cases were those involving Cubana de Aviación and the joint venture Sol y Son Viajes S.A., headed by Chilean businessman Marcel Marambio; the trials of Amado Fakhre and Stephen Purvis, British businessmen associated with Coral Capital; and the case against Canadian businessman Vahe Cy Tokmakjian, linked to TriStar Caribbean. The investigations led to asset seizures, company closures, and severe prison sentences.
However, according to two testimonies obtained by CubaNet and two court records reviewed for this investigation, not everyone implicated received the same treatment. Some individuals, despite being repeatedly mentioned during the investigations, were never prosecuted or questioned.
One of them was José de Jesús Díaz-Canel Rodríguez.
A graduate of the Ministry of the Interior’s “Captain Roberto Rodríguez” School in Santa Clara, Díaz-Canel Rodríguez later earned a master’s degree in Tourism Management and Business Administration. According to sources consulted by this outlet, his family connection to Miguel Díaz-Canel—who at the time was the top Communist Party (PCC) leader in Villa Clara—helped facilitate his rapid rise within the tourism sector, where he worked for companies such as Camagüey Travel and Infotur Cuba. It was at the latter organization where he allegedly committed several acts of corruption.
As a result, his name appears five times in the court records of the trial against Amado Fakhre and Stephen Purvis, which were reviewed by CubaNet. According to two sources consulted—a judge from Havana’s Diez de Octubre Municipal Court and a former official from the Havana Provincial Prosecutor’s Office—Díaz-Canel Rodríguez was never summoned by prosecutors nor called to testify before the courts. By that time, his cousin had already become one of the vice presidents of the Council of Ministers and was consolidating his rise within the regime’s power structure.
According to judicial testimony reviewed by this outlet, Díaz-Canel Rodríguez was identified by defendants Rosala Marina Peraza and Antonio Jesús Pereda Rodríguez (both of whom were sentenced to prison) as having allegedly received bribes from Coral Capital in exchange for fraudulently facilitating hotel licenses in Cayo Santa María, north of Villa Clara.
According to testimony presented during the trial, the projects were never actually carried out; they existed only in accounting documents and reports from the Ministry of Tourism. Part of the money was allegedly distributed among executives and officials involved, including the Cuban ruler’s cousin.
However, unlike others implicated in the case, Díaz-Canel Rodríguez was never touched by the investigation: he continued working normally at Infotur Cuba.
At the same time as the rise of the current Cuban “president,” Díaz-Canel Rodríguez was not the only member of the family who found opportunities and ventured into business. According to a source close to the family, Ernesto Díaz-Canel Rodríguez, his brother and also a cousin of the Cuban ruler, operates tourist rental properties together with his wife in Santa Clara and Havana.
One of their properties, located in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood, is advertised on digital platforms as “Casa Ana María Machado,” which is, in fact, the name of his wife.
This name is well known within Cuba’s political circles: the wife of Ernesto Díaz-Canel Rodríguez is the aunt of Ana María Mari Machado, a prominent figure in the Cuban political establishment and the current vice president of both the National Assembly of People’s Power and the Council of State.
Mari Machado, who is also from Villa Clara, began her career as a local judge in Encrucijada before rising to the Provincial Court and later to the People’s Supreme Court. Her promotion to the country’s political leadership coincided with the rise of her relative by marriage, Miguel Díaz-Canel.
The Spanish Branch of the Díaz-Canel Family
On April 16, the Cuban dictator suggested that young people who leave the island after completing their studies are contributing to the current migration crisis. In his speech, the ruler spoke about the “brain drain” but failed to mention that several members of his own family have left the country: young people educated in Cuba’s revolutionary universities who earned their degrees and then moved abroad.
Daniel Sánchez Díaz-Canel (the son of University of Havana professor and historian Reinaldo Manuel Sánchez Porro and Ana María Díaz-Canel, a cousin of Miguel Díaz-Canel), for example, graduated from medical school in Havana and emigrated to Spain in the late 1990s after obtaining a release authorization from the Ministry of Public Health—something uncommon for a newly graduated physician.
Much like today, the government considered doctors and other healthcare professionals to be “strategic resources.” This status involved numerous restrictions, including the need for state authorization to leave the country, even for temporary travel. Physicians who wanted permission to emigrate had to go through a lengthy bureaucratic process.
Today, Sánchez Díaz-Canel works at La Ribera University Hospital in Valencia, Spain. He makes frequent trips to Cuba and has not severed ties with the Cuban government. Perhaps for that reason, several state-run media outlets republished an interview that the doctor himself conducted with Carlos Lazo, a defender of the Cuban dictatorship, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
A similar path of studying in Cuba and later emigrating was followed by Javier Sánchez Díaz-Canel (the brother of Dr. Daniel), who also travels regularly to Havana. It is in the Cuban capital that he obtains cigars, which he then transports to Spain. There, he is involved in the wine and spirits trade, a business he shares with other relatives living in Spain, including Daniel Díaz-Canel Rodríguez (a nephew of the Cuban ruler).
After working to organize tourism trips to Cuba from Argentina and promoting Cuban cigars and rum in bars in Buenos Aires, the younger Díaz-Canel eventually settled in Barcelona in 2018. From Spain, he works for Isla Verde SRL, a company owned by Italian businessman Mauro Baeli, which was recently authorized to register a representative office in Havana.
Foreign Companies and Businesses Linked to Power
A few weeks ago, on April 29 of this year, Cuba’s Official Gazette announced the registration of several new foreign companies in Cuba, including Green Leaf S.L. and Isla Verde SRL. Both companies entered the island through Amorim Negocios Internacionais, headed by Italian businessman Paolo Titolo, the son-in-law of Raúl Castro. Both firms are also linked to the Díaz-Canel family.
The first, Green Leaf S.L., although registered in Spain, operates as a commercial brokerage firm connected to Chinese capital. According to sources consulted by CubaNet, part of its operations in Europe are coordinated by attorney Lourdes Dávalos, a well-known representative of the Cuban regime in international legal disputes.
Alongside Dávalos, these business ventures are overseen by Manuel Anido Cuesta, Miguel Díaz-Canel’s stepson. Manolito, as he is known within the family, has stopped accompanying the ruler on international tours in his role as an “advisor” and has moved to Madrid, like the rest of his cousins. Since 2025, Anido Cuesta has been enrolled in an executive program in international taxation at the Instituto de Empresa (IE) in the Spanish capital, while learning how to manage overseas business operations and training with Green Leaf S.L. (The company was founded in May 2019 by Jiang Zhang, the Cuba representative of Beijing Enterprises Group Real-Estate Co. Ltd.)
According to one source within Amorim’s representation in Havana and another from the Chamber of Commerce, the creation and establishment in Cuba of both Green Leaf S.L. and Isla Verde SRL was the initiative of Paolo Titolo, who maintains business relationships both with Jiang Zhang and with fellow Italians Mauro and Andrea Baeli, although the companies only recently obtained official authorization to establish offices on the island under Resolutions 39 and 40 of 2026.
For its part, Isla Verde SRL, according to information published on the company’s official website, was founded in 2012 and is the exclusive partner of the state-owned company CubaRon S.A. It has spent more than five years promoting a beverage called Ron Isla Grande. The company describes itself as “a commercial bridge between Italy and Cuba,” facilitating the “import-export of premium products” around the world through its other businesses, such as CisExport, which is also managed by the Baeli brothers.
It is for this company that both Daniel Díaz-Canel Rodríguez (who goes by DiazKnel on Instagram), a nephew of the Cuban ruler, and Javier Sánchez Díaz-Canel (the son of one of the ruler’s cousins) work as sales representatives. The former has worked there since 2018, which was the reason he moved from Argentina to Spain; the latter has been involved since sometime around 2015 in Valencia, according to at least one photograph Javier posted on one of his Facebook accounts, where he identifies himself as “Javi S. Dc.”
At first glance, the Díaz-Canels might appear to be a family like any other: close-knit, united, and active on social media. Their profiles are filled with images of family gatherings, dinners, celebrations, and affectionate messages that project an almost ordinary domestic life, far removed from the rigid public image historically maintained by the old Castro-era leadership.
The Facebook accounts of Javier and Daniel reflect precisely that family dynamic. Both share photographs with their cousins Miguel Díaz-Canel Villanueva and Jenny Díaz-Canel Villanueva, the children of Miguel Díaz-Canel. They also appear alongside Manuel Anido Cuesta and friends connected to business sectors favored by the regime, such as Carlos Javier Imperatori Flores, owner of the restaurants O’Relly 304 and El del Frente.
But behind this seemingly ordinary family image lies a network of privileges and connections built through proximity to power. As Miguel Díaz-Canel rose within the regime’s hierarchy, several of his relatives also began to gain opportunities, protection, and influence. In reality, these are relatively modest business ventures when compared with those managed by the Castros and the descendants of the other revolutionary commanders. Such benefits are, in effect, the price that Castroism has paid for the loyalty of its administrator.
In keeping with CubaNet’s journalistic standards, the individuals mentioned in this investigation were contacted to obtain their version of events. As of the publication of this report, they had not responded to the requests for information sent by this outlet.
