The plot could serve as a police intrigue script if it were not a perfect fresco of Cuban underground terror, and begins with a young woman who overhears a random comment from her father at home.
“This is the daughter of a State Security officer in Las Tunas,” Eliécer Ávila Cicilia, engineer and founding activist of the opposition group Somos+, tells CiberCuba. “That girl heard her father say that I couldn't imagine the surprise that awaited me in Cuba the next time I went.”
The comment traveled by word of mouth until it reached El Yarey, a rural town where Eliécer Ávila's family still lives today in the east of the country.
“That was the first time I knew they were up to something,” the activist confesses.
According to the incidental comment, the Cuban authorities were not going to prevent Eliécer from entering Cuba. On the contrary, they would welcome him with open arms. The problem was going to be getting out. His case was ready, just waiting for him.
“Two weeks later, Somos+ member and resident in the United States, Guillermo Estrada, traveled to the west to attend the trial of his brother, accused of unintentional homicide. That's when the second warning came,” Eliécer continues.
According to Estrada's testimony, State Security summoned him, interrogated him, and pressured him for hours. They offered him a pact: if he cooperated with them by sending information about Eliécer Ávila from the United States, his brother could “come out much better” in the trial he faced. For this, Estrada had to get very close to the leader of Somos+ and provide precise data.
“That's when I knew everything was serious. Above all, because this was no longer in Las Tunas, from where I received the first alert. Guillermo deceived them, accepted the pact and managed to get a little more information from them: they had a tax evasion case prepared against me, as soon as I set foot on Cuban soil it would be years before I would reunite with my wife and daughter in Miami." , says Eliécer.
Asphyxiation against the buyer
Georlys Olazábal Drake bought Eliécer Ávila's house in 2017 located at Esperanza 165 between San Quintín and San Gabriel, apartment number 5, El Cerro, Havana. All parties carried out the pertinent legal procedures at that time, and declared the amounts of the transaction to the Cuban treasury.
Two years later, Olazábal Drake began to feel inexplicable institutional pressure.
“Man, something strange happened to me today, a Housing inspector and an ONAT official came to see me (...) They came to tell me that they have been tracking me down for a while during the process of buying and selling the house and asking me if I had any type of communication with you. They left me a summons for Friday at the Housing Office, they told me that if I didn't go they would send me away.”
This is what Olazábal told Eliécer in a private message to which CiberCuba has had access with the consent of both interlocutors.
Shortly after, the situation would worsen.
“I just arrived from the Zanja Police,” the home buyer wrote to Eliécer shortly after. “I had to make myself uncomfortable because they are constantly telling me that they have a way to prove to us that we declared a price that was not the one we gave at the bank (…) This is personal with me or with you. They turned off my phone and when I told them to show me the photos you sent me, they told me that they were not interested in that at all.”
According to Eliécer Ávila, the asphyxiation against the buyer of his home, who even sold it a year later, had only one intention:
“Add it to the cause. "They needed Georlys to testify against me, to say that I lied about what he paid me for the house, to have him as a witness of my alleged tax evasion."
Since there is no functional banking system in Cuba, and since it is public knowledge that the political police investigate the economic situation of Cubans with total impunity, the vast majority of these purchase and sale transactions are still carried out today with cash. Shortly after signing the conditions of the transaction before notaries, Cubans declare the figures and pay the taxes that the State requires.
“All of that is in writing. The photos that they did not even let Georlys show are the signed receipts and all the documentation in order. They simply want him to say that the amounts were different, to imprison me and that's it," said the Somos+ director.
Confirmation from Miami
Eliécer's intention was to travel to Cuba before completing his two-year stay outside the country, so as not to lose the meager rights that the island's government still respects for Cubans residing abroad.
“I felt like I was having warnings everywhere. My daughter is newly born in the United States, it would be extremely irresponsible on my part to give myself away to a repressive apparatus that would do everything possible to keep me in a dungeon there. I needed to find out how serious this macabre invention was,” Eliécer tells CiberCuba.
Juan Juan Almeida was the final key to the confirmation.
“Mission accomplished,” the son of the deceased Commander of the Revolution Juan Almeida Bosque told him, after Ávila asked him to contact certain friends that he has on the island. “They confirmed to me that they are waiting for you in Cuba with a reception plan that includes a process in the prosecutor's office.”
They even confirmed to Juan Juan Almeida the exact point of the entire strategy:
“They already have the case and even the testimony of witnesses, but they cannot execute it because that plan has not yet been authorized. What you do have on the immigration computers is a “Notice of Entry.”
What does that “Notice of Entry” mean?
“The activation of a protocol that State Security has, and that is born in airport computers,” responds to CiberCuba Luis Lorenzo Ladrón de Guevara, until 2017 an official of the Provincial Court of the Playa municipality (currently residing in a city outside Florida that he prefers not to reveal; he received political asylum after providing sensitive documentation to the US authorities).
“When the political police finish building a case, that is, gathering evidence against an individual who does not live within Cuba, they are given a “Notice of Entry.” This means that as soon as you step foot on Cuban soil, the electronic system notifies immigration officials anywhere in the country that they must detain that person. From then on, Security takes charge of the case.”
The perfect pressure mechanism
According to what this lawyer told CiberCuba, tax evasion is becoming a perfect weapon to threaten, silence or imprison Cubans uncomfortable for the Castro apparatus.
“It is a bullet that they have been using quite frequently lately,” said Ladrón de Guevara. “Especially because the Cuban State is the owner and lord of all institutions, there is no way to prove that the accusation of tax evasion is slander. They win in advance.”
The case of Karina Gálvez, a member of the editorial board of the magazine “Convivencia”, in Pinar del Río, gained notoriety when the economist was arrested and her house searched by State Security in January 2017, under accusations of tax evasion. “It is a crime manufactured on political bases, I have no doubt,” declared Dagoberto Valdés, founder and director of the magazines “Vitral” and “Convivencia” at the time.
Months later, the activist was sentenced to three years in prison, her home confiscated by the State, and her passport withdrawn indefinitely.
“I don't have the slightest doubt that something like this is what they hope to do with me,” confesses Eliécer Ávila.
Double-edged sword: In the United States there would be consequences
To make matters worse, your case would be complicated even before the US authorities: if you remain outside the United States for more than six months, your US residency could be in danger.
“Whenever a resident leaves this country for more than six months, upon returning he must prove to the immigration authorities that he had no intention of abandoning his stay here, and consequently that his resident status was not annulled,” the lawyer told CiberCuba. of immigration issues Wilfredo “Willy” Allen.
“From six months to a year outside the United States, residency begins to be at risk. Starting this year, if you did not have a special permit issued before your trip through immigration, which justified your stay of more than a year abroad, you have a high probability of losing your residence," the lawyer said.
To make matters worse, an extended stay outside the United States as a result of a tax evasion accusation would not help in the least.
“Tax evasion is a crime in any country in the world,” Allen told CiberCuba, “since the United States has no way of verifying that an accusation of tax evasion has a political motivation behind it, it is simply very difficult to win a case like this.” ”.
EPILOGUE (WHICH IS NOT)
“This aberration is the reason why my parents and grandparents still don't know my daughter,” says Eliécer. “I had to postpone my trip to Cuba, even losing my rights as a Cuban there. I am the breadwinner for my wife and my daughter in the United States. It would be irresponsible to show up at a Cuban airport after all this atrocity that I already know.”
The lack of protection of Cubans in the face of a penal system controlled from beginning to end by the government apparatus continues to be one of the great problems of today's Cuba. The exercise of stark repression, where beatings are equally valid as the fabrication of criminal causes in retaliation against political disagreement, not only has not decreased in intensity after the death of Fidel Castro and the cosmetic change of Miguel Díaz-Canel for Raúl Castro, but by all accounts he is in terrible good health.
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