Influencer Manuel Milanés drew attention to the situation of the company Trust Investing (TI) in Cuba following the arrest of its regional leader, Ruslan Concepción.
Concepción was arrested at Havana airport when he was about to travel to Russia with his family, and he is accused of illegal economic activity.
TI is an online platform that manages capital investments and promises daily profits from an initial investment ranging from 0.1% to 5% monthly. Each new member must purchase a package to be granted access to the platform. The minimum amount to be paid is 15 dollars. Its CEO is Diego Chávez, and it is unknown who founded the company.
In this Friday's episode of Las mañanas de CiberCuba, Milanés emphasized that it is not about demonizing cryptocurrency, which in his opinion is here to stay, but about observing the moral responsibility of the pyramid scheme business model that causes some to depend on attracting new affiliates to generate profits.
"There are people who live off that and it goes well for them; sometimes they win, sometimes they lose... It’s risky, it’s difficult to be responsible to others, because you are going to make very risky decisions where you can win a lot or lose a lot," he said to illustrate the responsibility involved in this type of activity where people, under the sponsorship of a member, are at the mercy of how that sponsor moves the money that their affiliates have deposited.
"A business is a benefactor entity because it supplies a good and a service. Now, with 20,000, 30,000, or 200,000 Trust Investing affiliates in Cuba, what prosperity has been seen in Cuban society?" asks the influencer.
The answer, according to him, is that there is no benefit for Cubans in TI because the money only circulates among the affiliates within the bubble of this business. The money is generated by the affiliation to the site, not by market performance, said Milanés, who has devoted programs to explaining the scheme of this business.
"If you earn 10% of everything that you bring in, you are going to convince someone to sell their motorcycle and bring in 10 thousand dollars." This means that the more money they deposit upon joining, the greater the profit will be for both the affiliate (which can reach up to 200% annually) and their sponsored affiliate, who will earn 10% from each affiliate they bring in.
The influencer cites testimonies from trusters who claim to have entered with 15 dollars and won 20 thousand. "But you didn't end up with 20 thousand dollars because of cryptocurrency management, but because you joined that platform with 200 thousand dollars from people, and you got 10%," he clarifies.
"Then it is a moral problem," Milanés stated and asked, "What is going to happen now that even the Granma newspaper has echoed this after the regime's complicity has become evident?" In this regard, he considered it "quite questionable" that the government now wants to distance itself from any involvement in this scheme through a press release in the Granma newspaper, the official organ of the PCC, labeling Trust Investing as a scam.
The influencer provided examples of harassment against self-employed individuals who oppose the Cuban government while allowing the development of this type of Ponzi scheme in Cuba.
The evidence is there: hundreds of trusters, as they call themselves the affiliates of the TI platform, have gathered in different parts of the country, in the presence of the island's authorities, including Cuban officials and members of the Communist Party of Cuba, Milanés emphasized.
“They take away the carrots or the bread with ham from the candidate who has a patent, and it turns out that these people mobilized hundreds of thousands of Cubans, made presentations in JovenClubs, there are ETECSA executives [involved], there are officials,” said Milanés.
Just under a year ago, a Twitter user reported that an IT professional from a telecommunications company was involved in this pyramid scheme of dubious reputation.
The worker in question at the time defended his right to engage in other activities in his free time in a tweet pinned at the top of his profile on the social network. Not only that, but in the information section of his Facebook profile, his two jobs, at ETECSA and Trust Investing, can be read.
However, Ruslan Concepción is sent behind bars and is accused of illicit economic activity, with his role as a Manager in IT being the only job held by this 28-year-old entrepreneur, according to his associates.
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