The peak of violence that Cuba is experiencing does not manage to mobilize the regime's police machinery as economic crimes and political persecution do. This is the only way to understand that in none of the murders committed this month on the Island, the police intervened before the situation escalated. However, there are resources to set up complex operations like the one that resulted last year in the arrest of the young Cuban Roberto Nodarse Rodríguez (Havana, January 24, 1991), who was imprisoned on November 8, 2023, after being accused of selling dollars. He was sponsored, waiting for parole.

It happened in 10 de Octubre, but the DTI (Department of Technical Investigations) also carried out their raid in Los Pinos (Arroyo Naranjo), where his cousin, Cristhofer Milán Lorenzo, 20 years old, was caught. He grew up alongside Roberto Nodarse, and they are like brothers. Cristhofer was taken after an undercover DTI agent offered to sell him $1,000.

From his grandmother's house, located at Majjata 110, between Finlay and Naranjito, in Los Pinos, the officials confiscated 2,200 euros after a search. This is supposedly the evidence they have against him. The young man was released on December 29th. His mother lives outside of Cuba, and his father is a pilot. Both send him money to the island. Now the Prosecutor's Office claims that among those euros, there were some counterfeit bills, but there is no record with the numbers of the bills, and it is the word of the public ministry against that of the dispossessed family.

But Roberto Nodarse did not fare the same. They confiscated a car (a new Peugeot) that isn’t even his. According to his circle, a friend left it with Cristhofer Milán while he is traveling outside of Cuba and asked him to take care of it until he returns. Roberto Nodarse was stopped while driving the car, as part of the police operation, by DTI agent Ulguis Herrero Navarro, who is supposedly "corrupt," having a history of "fraud in Playa." He redirected the car to Nodarse's house and conducted a search there, during which they also confiscated 12,230 USD, 2,995 euros, 200 Swiss francs, and 210 Canadian dollars found at his home, which was intervened without a court order and with witnesses who are not from the neighborhood and have emigrated to the United States. The family claims that the agents did not document the amount of money confiscated.

Now Roberto Nodarse is being asked for at least five years in prison. His close ones claim that the money found at his home in 10 de Octubre was sent by his family from abroad to renovate, buy refrigerators, and supply a state cafeteria that had been allocated to him. Those who know him blame the neighborhood informant, Lucía Romero López, who also owns a cafeteria, for 'snitching' on him with bad intentions so that he wouldn't compete with her business.

Roberto Nodarse has been imprisoned since November 8, 2023, in the 1580, in Havana. Doctors suspect that he suffered a bacterial infection in prison and is currently hospitalized, experiencing cramps in his extremities, in bed 10 of the penal ward at the La Covadonga hospital in the Cuban capital. His wife and son are struggling to survive because he was the sole breadwinner for the family. She does nails, and with that, they cannot afford to eat.

Challenged the provisional detention

Roberto Nodarse's family appealed the precautionary measure of provisional prison (claim 85/24) after the young man was charged with an economic crime (preparatory phase file 273/23) for allegedly engaging in the illegal trafficking of national currency, foreign currency, and precious stones. From the Attorney General's Office of the Republic, they assured him in April of this year, in a document that CiberCuba has accessed, that there are already provisional conclusions in the process and that four months ago, it was only pending to forward the proceedings to the Municipal People's Court, so that it could arrange the opening of the oral trial.

However, Roberto Nodarse's family claims that a prosecutor named Alejandro told the young man's mother that there were already conclusions in the case three months before it reached the Attorney General's Office. She believes she was a victim of a deception because the case file arrived at the Prosecutor's Office on April 6, 2024.

According to DTI's investigation, the contacts "for the illicit activity" were made through Roberto Nodarse's phone, where people made money transfers to him via the Transfermóvil app for the money they were going to exchange. He is also accused of exchanging money deposited on freely convertible currency (MLC) cards into Cuban pesos. Additionally, they claim that during the search conducted at his home, they seized two cards that were used for those transactions. His family denies this and "assures that it is all a lie."

Due to all this, the provincial prosecutor of Havana, Idania María Maso Pérez, recommends in writing to the family that if, once the trial has been held, they do not agree with the court ruling, they have 10 working days from the notification to appeal the judge's decision. And after receiving a response, if they are still dissatisfied, they can file a cassation appeal.

The family demands justice because they believe that their son will be judged harshly despite the lack of evidence against him and additionally, they report irregularities in the process. One of these, for example, is that the same undercover agent who tricked Cristhofer Milán into exchanging dollars was present during the search of Cristhofer's house, and when another DTI officer realized this, he asked him to leave.

An elderly woman also went to the operations who passed by Roberto Nodarse's house twice to exchange dollars, and both times she was told that they did not engage in that. Additionally, they insist on pointing out the absence of records that document the exact amount of money seized, and now, to all the accusations, is added the charge of being in possession of counterfeit bills.