Fernando Javier Albán, owner of AgroIndustrial Media Luna, a successful company in Ciego de Ávila that produces fruit juices and other products under the Tuaba brand, was detained by Cuban authorities for an alleged investigation into his relationship with the ousted Minister of Economy and Planning, Alejandro Gil, recently accused of corruption.
According to an extensive report by The New Herald, Albán had been arrested days before the announcement of Gil's replacement as Minister of Economy and transferred to Havana. Now, citing anonymous sources, their cases could be related due to personal benefit for both parties.
One of the sources mentioned that one of the concerns of the Cuban police and State Security had to be answered was How exactly had he turned Media Luna into a private company?, since private companies were authorized for the first time in August 2021.
Trying to explain the progress of this private entity, they said that it first started as a “local development project”, a kind of private-state partnership that had to be approved by municipal authorities and pay a large part of its income to the government, as well as send their exports through state companies.
In the shortest time possible, Media Luna became the first private company authorized in Ciego de Ávila and from that moment on, eyes were on its development, as is the case with private businesses in Cuba.
A first investigation was stopped by the then Cuban deputy prime minister, although the authorities did not remain calm, and apparently now they have uncovered the hornet's nest again.
The New Herald assures that Media Luna remains closed, both its production facilities and its store on the central boulevard of the city of Ciego de Ávila, that despite the enormous posters with the figure of the communist dictator Fidel Castro, the supposed millions of dollars given to the local government, the repair of a hospital and a school, as well as an award from the National Association of Economists and Accountants of Cuba, received by its owner, or the frequent mentions in the state media, were not enough to be “forgiven.” ” by the regime.
The misfortune of the former Minister of Economy and Planning was made known to the world last Thursday, March 7, through a unusual and brief note signed by the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, in which he stated without many definitions that Alejandro Gil had made “serious errors” in the exercise of his duties.
Likewise, he said that "at the proposal of the Attorney General's Office of the Republic, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Party and the Council of State, they approved that the competent bodies of the Ministry of the Interior initiate the corresponding actions for the complete clarification of these behaviors." .
This Friday, the journalist from Martí News Mario J. Pentón reported in a video that he spoke with a source close to the investigation, who assured him that Gil could be detained and that his family found out through television.
"People very close to the investigation who decided to speak on condition of anonymity assured us that his house had been raided and they had taken him to talk, no one knows if to Villa Marista or a safe house of the Intelligence organs of the Cuban regime. "added the reporter.
After Díaz-Canel's note, quickly replicated by the Cuban official media, there has been no more information about the former minister. whose fall It will be used by the regime to justify many of its inefficiencies as a government.
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