01 June 2024 , 07:25
525
0
Cuba also has its Castro-bourgeois who, as in the Venezuelan case, enjoy privileged connections with the ruling family, when they are not directly members of it.
Through a thorough review of international commercial records done for this story, the independent Cuban media YucaByte uncovers two export-import networks that extend from Mexico and Spain for the benefit of the clan that has ruled the island since 1959.
It was December 2018. Like every Friday night, at the La Esencia bar , located in a colonial house in El Vedado, the cultural epicenter of Havana, there was a happy hour that was promoted under the name Tarde de Sol.
In the garden of the mansion, along with the Christmas lights, two vinyl gigantographs hung on each side of the columns at the entrance. A group of girls, all of them crowned with Christmas hats, brought and carried buckets with bottles of ice cold beer to the customers who gathered there; almost all of them, tourists and young people from Havana’s social elite - which there is -.
The waitresses wore black T-shirts with a printed logo, the same one seen on the giant prints and buckets: that of Sol beer, a lager from the Mexican brewery Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma , which until that date was barely known in the country.
Then a four-year period was about to end in which Cuba experienced the relief produced by the thaw with Washington, as part of the rapprochement policy undertaken by Barack Obama’s administration. In the heat of a timid opening by the Cuban regime to private initiative, the national public learned about the refreshing Sol, which soon conquered the domestic market.
Sol organized raffles at the Havana International Fairs (Fihav), the most important commercial and investment event in the country, as well as photography contests in entertainment magazines. Renowned artists, such as the salsa band Charanga Habanera, or the singer and composer Descemer Bueno, also participated in the brand’s campaigns.
Well, who in 2014 composed the song Bailando that would later impose itself on international music billboards along with Enrique Iglesias and Gente de Zona , and who in 2021 took part in the opposition Patria y Vida , even agreed to make a special version of his song, We went far , to record an advertising video for the beer.
Even in that period of openness, in which the island went from simple tolerance to a lukewarm promotion of commercial ventures, such advertising display - a practice that until then was associated with the disdained capitalism - was too much. Only some kind of official approval could justify it.
In Cuba, where the government has absolute control of imports and exports, an activity of this nature can only be carried out by a private individual if they have the trust of the Castros or are part of the family.
A young Cuban, Marco Jesús Amorós Moreno, now 32 years old, was the one who stood out in all that intense promotion. He showed himself as an ambassador of the brand on the island, to encourage “going out a lot, in this case buying a Sol beer, taking photos alone or with your friends, having a good time, and uploading them to the networks,” he described his mission in a interview , in which he also confessed: “I almost couldn’t believe that this was what the job consisted of and that they were also going to pay me to party.”
Like other young representatives of foreign companies attracted by the boom of the moment, Amorós had his ties; He still has them. He is one of the close friends of a grandson of Fidel Castro, Sandro Castro Arteaga, who in 2021 caused a scandal on social networks with a video in which he boasted of a luxurious Mercedes Benz.
By 2018, Sandro Castro managed some of the most expensive bars in the capital, such as Fantaxy and EFE , nightlife venues that, like La Esencia , began selling Sol beer and hosting brand promotion activities. .
But those connections did not necessarily make Marco Amorós the key player in the beer business. In reality, behind the advertising campaign were companies registered in Mexico and Canada, managed in turn by people related to the Castro leadership, who had brought the shipments of beer to Cuba.
This report traces the commercial records of these and other companies, all included in two extensive international trade networks, active today, and placed at the service of the Cuban regime and the Castro family. Both networks, modeled by two individuals who still operate them: José Israel Adato Steiermann and Héctor Castro Santana.
Below is revealed, for the first time, the map of connections of these companies, which extends from Mexico and Spain to connect with the Castros in Cuba. These networks not only include the import and sale of beer, but other areas, from telecommunications - where YucaByte began pulling the strings for this investigation - to legal services and the marketing of coal, agricultural products and beverages, among others. products.
A very cold ’lager’ leaves Cancun to Havana
Just a couple of months after the reestablishment of relations between Cuba and the United States, in February 2015, Mexican businessman José Israel Adato Steiermann founded the limited company Dibermex LLC in Florida, United States.
The distributor is in charge , among other activities, of marketing its clients’ products in different duty free channels , an attractive market due to the tax exemption and because it includes "military areas, diplomatic services, airports, shipping ports, cruises, ships cargo and commercial and stores in border areas”, as it proclaims on its website. For the necessary logistics, the company has a warehouse in Miami and claims to maintain relationships with more than 250 supplier companies.
Dibermex LLC is one of the four companies that share that name, an acronym for Distribuidora de Bebidas y Refrescos Mexicanos, SA, the precise name of the first company that Adato registered, in 1997, in Panama.
Dibermex, together with the company Interglobe, also owned by Adato, were responsible for the marketing behind Sol beer in Cuba. In addition, Dibermex LLC shipped at least 8,368 cases of American Miller Lite beer to the island , according to import-export databases.
Pepe Adato, as he calls himself online at 59 years old, has taken control of at least 11 other companies over the last two decades. He frequently travels to Cuba and Spain, and resides with his wife, María Begoña Arellano Mieres, in Supermanzana 500, a residential area of Cancún, the tourist mecca of the state of Quintana Roo, in Mexico. She, a graduate in Business Administration and Management, and Daniel Adato Arellano, one of his sons, have lent their names for the registration of these businesses, as directors or attorneys-in-fact.
Adato’s father, who was also a businessman, lived in Cuba before settling permanently in Mexico. Mauricio Adato, a Jewish Turk, settled on the island at the end of the 50s of the last century. When the revolutionary government took power, Adato Sr. joined the Ministry of Industries, where he was the first delegate. This appointment as a representative of a state institution was only granted to people loyal to the newly established revolutionary regime. The delegates, Fidel Castro himself defined in a 1961 speech, constituted “the active and thinking core of the working class,” among whom there could be “no turncoat, no corrupt person, no give-up, no traitor, because no workplace "I would have admitted that an unworthy person represented him."
However, Mauricio Adato left Cuba in the mid-60s and emigrated to the Aztec country. His four children were born there and he became a businessman.
By the end of the 90s, two Adato family companies were already registered in the names of lawyers who served as their agents. Among these was Keydee Chaveli González Delgado, a Panamanian citizen who has since been at the service of the Adatos and other companies linked to Cuba. In 2020 she registered Al Caribe Sales SA , a store of the then emerging online commerce for sending parcels to the country from the Colón free zone, on the north-Caribbean front of Panama.
Already mentioned, Interglobe Inc. (formerly Interglobe Trading Inc.) is the oldest company in this network, which José Israel Adato joined to eventually direct it. It was registered in 1984 in Canada, when the island was just opening up with suspicion to foreign investment.
Although registered in the Chamber of Commerce of the Republic of Cuba in the field of computing since 1997, today the company is also dedicated to the commercialization of beers - in 2019 it registered the commercial slogan of Sol beer in Cuba -, as well as malts, frozen meats and household supplies. It has an office on 1st Street, between A and B, in El Vedado. In the building, which houses other companies linked to the regime, Dibermex LLC also had its headquarters until 2023.
By the date of the founding of Interglobe Inc., the Castro regime already had some years of experience in registering companies in foreign jurisdictions.
Following the expulsion of Cuba from the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1962, and until the end of that decade, the main headquarters of these operations were Canada and European countries such as Switzerland, Malta and Luxembourg, known, among other things. , for serving as tax havens, according to former Cuban diplomat Enrique García Díaz, from Miami, for this report.
This is how it worked “until, in the early 1970s, Panamanian President Omar Torrijos reestablished diplomatic relations with the island,” explains García Díaz, who also worked during that time, and for 11 years, as an operational agent of the General Directorate of Intelligence. “It was then when the Cuban government began to register its companies in the Central American country. And those companies, I can tell you, covered everything. One was created for ships, one for imports… There came a time, in the mid-1980s, when the number of Cimex [ corporation ] companies in Panama was around 67.”
With Cimex, García refers to a Cuban State corporation that manages a broad portfolio of companies throughout the country, including stores, gas stations and real estate agencies. It also controls the remittance and investment market through Fincimex SA. Initially it reported to the Ministry of the Interior (Minint) but, when Raúl Castro assumed power, it was absorbed by the Business Administration Group SA (Gaesa) of the Ministry of the Armed Forces.
Fidel’s great-nephew runs the business from Spain
The fact that opportunities opened up in Panama for the operations of the Castro regime did not stop, however, the expansion of the network of companies that had already been developing from Europe.
One of them, Gieinter AG was founded in 1977 in Lugano, Switzerland. Today, with almost 50 years of operations, the company is still active. It has been registered in the Chamber of Commerce of the Republic of Cuba since 1997. Even so, it was only recently, in October 2023, when it received authorization from the Ministry of Commerce and Foreign Investment (Mincex) to open an office on the island.
Gieinter AG is dedicated to the marketing of coal, wood, metals and industrial products in general. Currently, it supplies Cuban entrepreneurs with wooden boards, fabrics, hydraulic parts, rolls of artificial grass and other items for their businesses.
In 2007, Massimo Vecchi, a 67-year-old Italian involved in this network, became president of Gieinter AG. Vecchi was director of the Cuba Commercio e Servizi GEIE group , which facilitates the promotion of Cuban products in the Italian peninsula; and he has participated as a director, vice president or business representative in Spain and Panama that this investigation reveals later.
Later, in October 2011, Vecchi also joined as president of a company that operated, between 2012 and 2018, under the name Gieinter Trade SA. The firm, founded in 1981, has since changed its name four times. Currently, it is identified as Finsuiza AG , and serves as the president and administrator company of two other Swiss companies detected by YucaByte .
Along with Vecchi, three recurring people from the network have also appeared as members or presidents of Gieinter AG. Two of them of Italian origin: Esteban (Stefano) Belso Sabini, and Giovanna Vecchi, 35 years old, who was the legal representative of the group of businessmen.
The last to join Gieinter AG, as president, was the Spanish citizen Oscar García Fernández. Months later, in 2016, he created a branch in Panama, Gieinter AG Branch . And, just a year later, he was appointed representative of a third group, Gieinter Ibérica SL , in Spain. The latter entered the commercial registries in 2017, with the help of the Boza Abogados y Consultores SLP firm, directed by Héctor Castro Santana.
The Gieinter group is also associated with a Cuban MSME, Industrias Párraga, approved in 2022 by the Ministry of Economy and Planning. MSMEs are private, small and medium- sized businesses, to which the Cuban government of Miguel Díaz-Canel, closely supervised by Raúl Castro, has given carte blanche. Although they represent a gap for entrepreneurship, they usually have links with the Castro nomenklatura.
Industrias Párraga, the MSME mentioned, is based in Siboney, the most exclusive residential area in the country, very close to the house of Raúl Castro himself. His representative, Eric René Fernández Alfonso de Armas, uses as contact information an email with the domain gieinter.ch, corresponding to the Swiss company Gieinter, which is reviewed in this story.
For his part, Héctor Castro Santana is revealed by his first surname. The 49-year-old lawyer is the grandson of Ramón Castro, the older brother of Fidel and Raúl and, therefore, the great-nephew of the two revolutionary leaders. Although it has been more than 20 years since he emigrated from Cuba, he assures that he maintains a good relationship with his great-uncle Raúl and the rest of the family.
Castro Santana went to study in Spain a few months after graduating in Law from the University of Havana, in 1999. After two years, he graduated with a master’s degree on the European Union from the University of Alcalá in Madrid. And in the following year, in 2002, he approved his degree as a lawyer at that same center.
A few months after homologating his title , and almost simultaneously with the construction of the Adato plot in Mexico, Castro Santana began to spin his own empire. In June 2002 he founded the first of his three law firms, The CC Law Firm, in the Salamanca district, one of the most expensive in Madrid and all of Spain, full of luxury stores and million-dollar properties.
The triad of legal offices that make up the aforementioned firm Boza Abogados y Consultores SLP, along with The CC Law Firm, is completed by another more recent firm, registered in 2021, HCFC Abogados Internacionales SLP , which specializes in both the offering of legal services nationality and immigration procedures for Cubans, as well as advising companies interested in investing in Cuba.
It is worth clarifying that law is a profession that not all Cubans who graduate on the island can practice abroad. This requires extra studies and bureaucratic procedures that most cannot afford. To make matters worse, within the country, its independent practice is prohibited.
When Castro Santana registered as sole administrator of the Boza Abogados y Consultores SLP law firm in 2013, the company had already been operating for five years. At its head were Luis Enrique Martínez Estañol and Amílcar Frías Sardiñas, also Cubans, who until then had all the legal power to make decisions about the company, in their capacity as joint administrators. Both, like Castro Santana, graduated with a Law Degree from the University of Havana and resided in Madrid.
Sardiñas Frías, together with his ex-wife, Norvis Díaz Baños, also has two other companies: USA General Construction Consulting Group, Corp., created in 2007 in Florida; and Fisher Design Group SL., registered in 2014 in Madrid. The latter is involved in recurring sectors of the commercial network, such as the marketing of agricultural raw materials, metals and minerals.
The other, Martínez Estañol, can be seen in several photos on his Facebook profile with Castro Santana, the great-nephew of Fidel and Raúl. As the graphs show, they have shared dinners, adventures such as parachute launches, and seats in the first rows of the Santiago Bernabéu stadium , home of Real Madrid, in the final of the 2017 Spanish Super Cup. Martínez Estañol, member of the Professional Association Immigration Lawyers of Madrid (Apaem), serves as attorney and administrator of some nine companies, including legal consultancies, importers and exporters.
With the registration of Castro Santana in Boza Abogados y Consultores SLP, Martínez Estañol and Frías Sardiñas became just representatives of the company. The move, which in the records subordinated them to Castro Santana, also brought with it the change of the company’s name, since before it was only called Boza Consultores SLP.
Today, the firm has a staff of no more than nine employees, while billing around two million dollars a year. The office where it operates in Madrid also appears among the collection points for packages for shipment from Spain to Cuba, run by the company Viajes Sunshine SL, registered in the name of Yolexi Singh Frías , a Cuban accused in Spain of espionage for the Castros . Consultoría Jurídica Miramar SL, another of Singh Frías’ companies, also shares the same address in Madrid with Boza Abogados y Consultores SLP.
In November 2023, Yolexi Singh Frías announced on her Instagram account that the Cuban MSME Nego Servis Expreso SURL had “a variety of beers available for its business”, sent spare parts for cars, and offered the wholesale purchasing service for companies in Cuba . The MSME is registered on the island by Rogelio Singh Luque, Yolexi’s father and former colonel of State Security .
During its 16 years of operations, the Boza de Castro Santana legal firm has incorporated at least twenty companies under its name, of which this investigation could not confirm that all of them had links with the Castro regime.
But Castro Santana, the great-nephew of Fidel and Raúl Castro, did not limit his business to the legal field. In 2018 he entered the real estate sector, with Elite Real Estate & Consultancy SL, a company of which he has been the sole administrator to date. And together with another close friend, Yuro Leyva, an actor by profession and resident in the Spanish capital, he founded two other artistic and entertainment promotion companies.
Hummo Productions was the first. They registered it in 2014, at the same address as the headquarters of The CC Law Firm. Artists and groups recognized internationally, such as Los Van Van, or the reggaeton duo Gente de Zona, have been promoted by the agency.
In statements to Yucabyte , Leyva claimed to be the founder, producer and sole owner of the agency. “When I created Hummo Productions SL I did not have the knowledge of how to manage a company in Spain, it was all new to me,” he explained by email. “To address all the technical and legal needs that this endeavor entails, I asked Hector (who was already a lawyer with experience in business administration) to be the administrator of my company until I had enough capacity to do it alone, at which time who graciously agreed for a while, until I was able to take charge,” he said.
According to the actor, he and Castro Santana met in Madrid through a friend they have in common. Their relationship, he says, “became a sincere, solid friendship.” So much so that later, in 2016, both ventured into a new business and jointly founded the company Gateway Cuba Limited, registered in the United Kingdom, together with businessman Howard White.
At that time, Castro Santana enjoyed certain special attention in Spain for carrying the surname of the most powerful family on the island. In an interview with a local Galician media - the ancestors of the Castros left for Cuba from Galicia - while he was on a tourism trip, he said he felt recognized and loved by the people, "both inside and outside of Cuba." In the interview he admitted in passing that “I have a relationship with the people at the Embassy” of Cuba in Madrid.
These privileges continued to open the doors to Héctor Castro Santana, who also hosted part of another group of companies in Spain and in offshore jurisdictions, also through the firm Boza Abogados y Consultores SLP. As in the group founded in Switzerland from Gieinter AG, the Cuban Oscar García Fernández and the Italian Giovanni Vecchi participate in this plot.
Yucabyte contacted Castro Santana, as well as Martínez Estañol and Singh Frías, by email so that they could explain their role in the companies involved in this network. However, as of this writing, none of them had responded.
The Cuban semi-slave charcoal lights the ’barbecue’
The cornerstone of another part of the network connected to Castro Santana is a Panamanian company: Gliola SA
Gliola SA defines itself as “a leader in the coal market produced in Cuba.” Since 2005 it has operated as an “exporter of non-traditional Cuban products”, registered in the Chamber of Commerce and in the Mincex database, where another Italian appears as a representative, Giancarlo Battagliola . In the case of Gliola SA, the aforementioned category of “non-traditional” products from the island mainly includes charcoal, but also rum, lobsters, fruits and vegetables.
Castro Santana is linked to this network through a company that has been operating in Spain since at least 2012 under various names and administrators. For a time it was called Forma Caribe SL, which changed its name to G liola SL when, in 2019, it moved to the same street and number in Madrid where Castro Santana’s law firm is located.
But it wasn’t just a change of name and address. Gliola SL then received an injection of 174,000 euros , which represented an increase of almost 6,000% in its capital. She had a company as administrator and vice president, the Swiss VG Vegetables Goods AG, which was registered as a supplier in the Cuban Mincex. Likewise, he included among his activities, in addition to those he had already been carrying out in the import and sale of charcoal and its derivatives, legal consulting on the market and investments in Cuba, that is, the specialty of Héctor Castro Santana.
The group has two other related companies. The most recent, Gliola LTD , was registered in June 2020 in the United Kingdom and, just three months after being founded, it changed its name to BCE-Online LTD. Led by Antonio Brundo, the company advises others on finance and advertising.
Brundo, a 42-year-old Italian national , has led other British companies under similar names. One of them, which has already changed its name six times since its founding in 2016, is run together with a legal entity, the Panamanian Gliola SA, already presented above in this report.
In Germany, Brundo was registered in 2011 as a director of two more companies: Miracoal GmbH and Bce-trade.com GmbH. Both companies appear linked to the website of Carbocuba , a brand of marabou fuel. In the latter, Brundo’s leadership was fleeting, since that same year he left the position in favor of Carlo Comizzoli , another Italian who holds positions in the presidency of several companies in Panama, and who has worked with Massimo Vecchi since the 1990s. 80s.
The second relative of Gliola SA, Gliolasa SL, is also active in the export of Cuban charcoal, spirits, honey, fruits, fish and seafood to the Iberian Peninsula. It was created in Madrid in 2018 and was established in a location, without a sign or plaque identifying it, in a two-story building in Arganda del Rey, an industrial municipality on the outskirts of the Spanish capital.
Right at that address of Gliolasa SL in Arganda del Rey - 51 Autumn Street - there is another company, Marabú Grill. Like the others, it works in importing coal to Spain, and also appears as a restaurant in some directories.
And why would a name like marabou be used to name a business with Cuban connections? Because the marabou ( Dichrostachys cinerea ), even though it is an invasive species of South African origin, is a shrub that already occupies around 20,000 square kilometers of agricultural land in Cuba. Its wood, exposed to high temperatures in special ovens, produces high quality charcoal, in demand in international markets. This is how its spread, which was seen in the s. XX like that of a plague, began to offer opportunities for export.
In 2022, Cuban charcoal exports were valued at $41 million, including marabou charcoal produced by prisoner slave labor in several camps in the country. Hence, then, the species can give its name to both a Cuban restaurant and a charcoal importer on the outskirts of Madrid.
That same year, in 2022, Castro Santana ceased as administrator of Boza Abogados y Consultores SLP, as well as the company Selected Spirituous & Foods SL , a beverage marketer. A year earlier, he had changed the registration of the latter to his name , with the same address as The CC Law Firm, the first of his firms.
Hummo Productions, the artistic promotion company, also underwent some modifications in the meantime. Two years ago, Héctor Castro appointed himself administrator but, just four days later, the Official Gazette of the Commercial Registry of Spain (Borme) declared it an error.
The “error” in Hummo’s registration occurred, strikingly, just months after activists and independent media in Cuba published information about Castro Santana’s business activities and some details of his private life, such as his fondness for cigars, the golf and travel.
Telephone recharges, Miami and a ’topmodel’ Castro
As the diplomat García Díaz refers in an interview with YucaByte , the Castro regime has always justified its businesses and commercial networks, as well as the lack of transparency in them, with the excuse that these are necessary measures to circumvent the United States embargo.
This is how in the last 40 years he has been creating companies outside of Cuba, which continue to operate to this day. And this is also how Pepe Adato continued to develop his business nodes mainly from Cancún.
As has been said, the Adatos participated in business with Cuba since the late 90s. They managed legal entities such as Yonel SA or Interglobe Inc, the latter, registered in the Cuban Chamber of Commerce as early as 1997. Also Dibermex, with which years later they would introduce Sol beer in Cuba. These importer-exporters also sent shipments of malt, beans and footwear to the island, among other products.
However, it was not until 2007 that the family’s businesses began to flourish. From that year until 2017, Adato Steiermann and his wife, María Begoña Arellano, bought shares in four companies and registered another five. Two brothers of Cuban nationality, Yaino and Onaney del Castillo Barbosa, cooperated from the commercial registries as partners in that expansion.
The first of them, Yaino del Castillo Barbosa, resident in Kholy, a traditional Havana neighborhood of mansions, reserved exclusively for military and high-ranking government officials, is in particular a close friend of Adato. They have shared parties and rides in convertible cars along the Malecón, during the Mexican’s trips to Havana.
Yaino del Castillo is also the current partner of Liset Ulloa Díaz , mother of Antonio Tony Castro Ulloa , another of Fidel’s grandchildren. Like his father, Antonio Castro Soto, and his cousin, Sandro Castro, Tony , the family’s top model , has been the subject of scandals for his ostentatious lifestyle, which includes yacht rides and trips around Europe. .
Like other names in this network, the del Castillo brothers also appear in international commercial registries. Yaino was the majority shareholder, with a 99.9% stake, in the Cuban Yum Comercializaciones, incorporated into the Mexican Foreign Investment Companies. Onaney, for his part, managed the company Caribbean Export & Real Estate, LLC from 2013 to 2015 , together with Horacio del Castillo; and in 2020 he created the legal consulting firm OCB Consulting Inc , both in Florida, USA.
It was no coincidence that the Adatos’ prosperity in Mexico coincided with changes in the map of power in Cuba. Between 2006 and 2008, Fidel Castro handed over control to his brother Raúl, who implemented new liberalization measures when he held the position of president in the Councils of State and Ministers. Among the flexibilities, Raúl Castro authorized the purchase of lines and cell phones from nationals.
Then, in 2012, the state telecommunications company, Etecsa, implemented mobile balance recharge offers, but only from abroad. With this, it opened the floodgates to a business that, according to calculations from previous investigations by YucaByte , represents profits of more than 1.4 billion dollars annually for the telecommunications monopoly. To complete the operation, different providers emerged that offer remote payment services abroad, among whom the Adatos sneaked in.
When the refilling boom burst, the Adatos already had business with Cuba in this sector. For example, the well-known Interglobe Inc. and Yonel SA served as occasional suppliers - according to the records consulted - of telephone adapters, cabling and other telephone equipment. So it didn’t take long for them to become part of Etecsa’s new business.
Global Digital Services Dominicana SA , registered in Panama in the name of Adato, his wife and one of his children, Daniel Adato Arellano, was one of the initial platforms that had commercial agreements with the Cuban state company to process recharges, in 2013.
MiNumeroLocal , a partner of Global Digital Services Dominicana SA , was also one of the first to offer recharges. Its owner on paper , Juan Carlos Oliva, is a Cuban-American telecommunications engineer who, in turn, runs some nine active companies in the fields of computer science and telecommunications, legal services and travel agencies.
Although originating in the telecommunications sector, Global Digital Services Dominicana SA and MiNumeroLocal participate in other businesses that target the Cuban expatriate market. The first, directed by Adato, but in which Juan Carlos Oliva’s children later joined as partners, has ventured into the global parcel and courier business. In 2012, he sent medicines, clothing, food and electronic equipment to Cuba for five dollars a pound. Meanwhile, MiNumeroLocal is involved in the business of online food purchasing stores for Cuba, and offers charter flights to Havana.
At this time, the Adato network continues to expand. Just last year, in May 2023, in a second streak of firm creation, it registered three new ones in Florida: Dibermex Travel Services LLC , Dibermex Communications LLC, and Dibermex Logistics LLC . All of them with registered offices at the same address of one of Oliva’s companies, who also acts as a partner of the original Dibermex branch in the same state.
Likewise, in 2021 the Cuban Ministry of Economy and Planning approved a MSME called Dibermex SURL , which is also dedicated to the wholesale of beverages and jams. Nor does it seem coincidental that its representative is Marco Jesús Amorós Moreno, the official face of the Sol brand in Cuba, who was mentioned at the beginning of this report.
Like other people in this network, Yucabyte contacted José Israel Adato Steiermann, Yaino del Castillo Barbosa, Juan Carlos Oliva and Marcos Jesús Amorós Moreno via email. Until the closing of the report, no response was obtained from any of them.
Amorós, Sandro Castro’s great friend, registered Dibermex SURL at the address of his own house, in El Vedado, where the May May market is also based. Again, a loop of privileges; because only Cubans who can afford the extremely inflated prices of imported products manage to make purchases in retail MSMEs that function as private warehouses.
Several articles and investigations by the independent press have revealed the links of MSMEs with another granddaughter of the Castro family , repressors and figureheads of the regime. In addition, other networks of importer-exporters and parcel shipments to Cuba have come to light in recent months. A whole expanding network, connected to the first businesses that the Castro leadership created four decades ago.