Between 8 and 15 years in prison for three convicted of corruption in Cuba

A corruption case in a Cuban state-owned company brought two executives and a private worker before a court, accused of several crimes, including embezzlement, for which they were sentenced to between 8 and 15 years in prison, state television reported on Thursday. For the second time in the last month, the television space ‘Hacemos Cuba’ was dedicated to addressing acts of administrative corruption in state-owned companies, one of them detected in the Finance and Prices department of the province of Pinar del Río (west). The main person involved, facing a sentence of 15 years in prison, is the Director of Finance and Prices of the province, who irregularly transferred around two million pesos (about $83,000 at the official exchange rate for legal entities or 71,091 million euros) and partially benefited from that money. The official was also convicted of authorizing payments to another private entity for services not rendered and for falsifying invoices for 70,000 Cuban pesos (about $2,916 or €2,497).

Other cases

The television report denounced another case in which five crimes were committed, including one against the security of telecommunications, information technologies and their services, and others of influence peddling and forgery of bank documents. A day earlier, state media reported that four directors of a state-owned company in Sancti Spíritus province (center) were sentenced to up to twenty years in prison for acts of embezzlement that caused losses of almost 100 million Cuban pesos. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Cancel has reiterated his government’s “zero tolerance” for economic crimes, and during a meeting with the Attorney General’s Office (FGR), he noted that corruption “hinders social development, growth, and economic development,” in addition to generating distrust among the population. Cuba is going through a deep economic crisis in the last five years due to the effects of the pandemic and its combination with the fall in tourism, the tightening of US sanctions and errors in economic and monetary policies.