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By Nora Gámez Torres
Miami Herald
(Miami Herald) The governor of the Cuban central province of Cienfuegos “offered his resignation” after acknowledging “committing errors in his job,” a two-graph note in a local newspaper announced last week, the latest high-profile case in a broad government-led anti-corruption campaign that seems to be targeting public officials who illegally profited from close links with the islands fledgling private businesses. headline news
The private sector is also a target of campaign, as the government tries to enforce tax rules for small and medium enterprises, known by the abbreviation mipymes in Spanish. Sources with knowledge of the situation have told the Miami Herald that dozens, if not more, of private business owners have been prevented from traveling abroad because they owe taxes.
Because the private businesses need the permission of local governments to operate, the system seems ripe for abuse, a Cuban entrepreneur who asked not to be identified said.
The entrepreneur said that a local official in Havana who was in charge of garbage collection in the central neighborhood of El Vedado had recently been arrested. He had pressured private businesses to sign contracts with the state for the collection of garbage generated by their businesses. But the service was not actually provided. Instead, the official pocketed the money from the contracts as well as from the sale of fuel allocated by the government for garbage collection.
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A former official for the municipal government of Plaza de la Revolución in Havana who favored a local business — and then left his government job to work at that same private company — was also arrested, the entrepreneur said. The entrepreneur said there are ongoing audits of private enterprises and that some business owners have been arrested too.
Another source with knowledge of the situation said that the National Office of Tax Administration issued a blanket travel restriction for private business owners unless they obtain a letter attesting they do not owe taxes.
The uncertainty surrounding the latest campaign and the ambivalent position of the government regarding the private sector, which it has tolerated but also blamed for problems like inflation, is already making some business owners hold off on investment and expansion plans, the entrepreneur said. Another Cuban entrepreneur told the Herald that the climate of uncertainty is causing anguish among business owners on the island.
Most of the anti-corruption campaign has been happening outside of public view, except for the rare instances when a high-raking official, like the governor of Cienfuegos, had to be replaced.
A short note in the newspaper 5 de Septiembre said the governor, Alexandre Corona Quintero, had resigned after “recognizing errors committed in the exercise of his responsibility,” and that Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel had accepted the resignation.
The Communist Party had removed the party first secretary for Cienfuegos in December. The reshuffling within the party is also notable, with several first secretaries being substituted in recent months.
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On Wednesday, Cuba’s Official Gazette published a National Assembly resolution that set the election of a new governor for May 5. The governor is elected by municipal delegates, not Cienfuegos voters.
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The unusual way the news was made public in a provincial newspaper, phrasing it as a resignation instead of resorting to the usual script of party and government officials deciding to “free” someone from his or her “official functions,” speaks to the government’s ambivalence about publicly linking the firing to anti-corruption efforts.
The newspaper note does not say if Corona Quintero, 51, who was a former official in the Interior Ministry, has been arrested. But his firing was widely expected as what seem to be details of the government investigation were leaked in videos circulating on social media. According to the videos, the governor had diverted state resources from a housing project to build himself a mansion. The videos referred to several other schemes involving other officials in the province’s local government and the military. The governor also allegedly granted construction contracts to a private business he secretly owned.
The Herald has not been able to independently verify the claims.
Corona Quintero is not the highest-ranking official affected by the purge amid an ever-worsening economic crisis which the government lacks a clear plan to tackle, and which has already led to public protests.
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Economy Minister Alejandro Gil, a close friend of Díaz-Canel’s and the public face of several failed monetary policies, was fired and later accused of corruption last month.
The government has put a lid on the investigation, and few details have leaked to the public. Gil’s relatives in Spain previously said he and his wife were detained and held incommunicado. Sources told the Herald that the arrest of a private entrepreneur, Fernando Javier Albán, owner of AgroIndustrial Media Luna, a successful business in Ciego de Ávila that makes fruit juices and other products, was connected to Gil’s case.
In a country where corruption is widespread, and its leaders live with the comforts denied to most of the population, corruption charges against senior officials usually carry political motivations.
Previous anti-corruption campaigns under Raúl Castro, who is officially retired but is still leading the country, were led by his son Alejandro Castro Espín, a counterintelligence senior official who was given wide authority to detain high-ranking military officials and foreign investors.
But Castro-Espín disappeared from public view in 2016, around the same time the first reports of the health incidents that came to be known as Havana Syndrome affecting American diplomats, among others, became public.
This time, it is not entirely clear who ultimately decides which officials will be targeted next.
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