The main spokesperson of the Cuban regime, the newspaper Granma, published an article on Wednesday threatening those who buy or sell foreign currency, reminding that this activity is not only a criminal offense but also results in the loss of the money involved, thereby showing the severity with which the government tries to control the economic transactions of its citizens.
In its digital edition, the newspaper struck out against those who exchange national currencies for foreign ones, arguing that this "affects the economic system of the country." It also noted that any transaction for the sale, assignment, transfer, or acquisition of foreign currency "is illegal and constitutes a crime."
According to Granma, the population must know that there is not "an informal market," but a crime that "takes advantage of the facilities of social communication networks for the offering, buying, selling, and exchanging of national currency and foreign currencies."
In this regard, he blamed the platform El Toque, describing it as “an indicator of the illegal market” and noting that its strategy is “to affect the economy, generate a negative impact on the monetary scale of the country, and worsen the living conditions of Cubans,” disregarding all the facets of the worsening economic crisis in Cuba, as well as its main responsible party, the government itself.
The Granma article recalled the entire regulatory legal framework under which it threatened citizens, urging them not to continue the buying and selling of foreign currency.
It mentioned items a) and c) of Article 11 of Decree-Law No. 361, dated September 14, 2018, where it states that the Central Bank of Cuba (BCC) proposes “monetary, financial, credit, and exchange policies, coordinating their designs and scopes with the objectives of fiscal policy.”
The Bank is also responsible, according to Resolution No. 177, dated November 26, 2020, for establishing "the exchange rate of the Cuban peso against foreign currencies."
He emphasized that Decree-Law No. 362, dated September 15, 2018, in its article 15, states that exchange houses “are the Cuban financial institutions that carry out currency exchange operations and the buying and selling of foreign coins and banknotes, exchange and re-exchange.”
The Granma article also emphasized that, in Cuba, Law No. 151, of May 15, 2022, the current Penal Code, in paragraphs (e) and (g) of its article 315.1, "provides as a crime the actions of selling or, by any means, transferring, transmitting, or acquiring foreign currency."
"These actions are punished with imprisonment of two to five years, or a fine of five hundred to one thousand units, or both," he reminded.
Finally, it is worth noting that individuals who risk entering the purchase in this illegal market "are exposed to being considered guilty of a currency counterfeiting crime – article 330.1 d) of Law No. 151 of 2022 – which occurs when the currency that has been sold or exchanged is fake and the person who received it puts it into circulation."
In last July, the Cuban police dismantled a network of million-dollar scams in the illegal buying and selling of foreign currencies in the city of Santa Clara, in Villa Clara, and arrested the four women who were allegedly part of it.
From the end of 2023 until the moment of their arrest, the detainees carried out more than 15 scam operations, with amounts for each ranging between 800,000 and more than 1,000,000 Cuban pesos, according to Lieutenant Colonel Héctor de la Fe Freire, head of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) in the central Cuban city, who informed the station CMHW.
In February, two Cubans were arrested for their involvement in several cases of fraud in the illegal sale of currency also in Santa Clara.
According to what was revealed on Facebook by the officialist profile Fuerza del Pueblo, a couple recently fell victim to a scam after contacting some people on social media who supposedly engaged in the buying and selling of dollars.
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