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A comprehensive report from BBC News Mundo published this Tuesday reveals, with unprecedented detail, the operations of Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A. (GAESA), the business conglomerate linked to the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) that controls approximately 40% of Cuba's GDP while the population endures power outages and extreme scarcity.
The holding does not have a website, does not publish financial statements, does not appear in the state budget, and neither the National Assembly of People's Power nor the General Comptroller of the Republic can audit its accounts. Despite this, it pockets almost every dollar from the most profitable businesses of the regime: tourism, remittances, foreign trade, and medical missions abroad.
The BBC report is based on leaked internal financial documents provided to the Miami Herald: 22 financial statements from various companies in the group that revealed concrete figures about the conglomerate for the first time.
According to those documents, in March 2024 the conglomerate controlled assets valued at least at 17.894 billion dollars, of which 14.467 billion were in bank accounts. These figures exclude CIMEX, the largest company in the conglomerate, so the actual fortune would be even greater.
The economist Pavel Vidal, one of the foremost experts on Cuba's finances, describes it accurately: "It is an economy within another". He adds that "its balances are secret, Cuban media do not mention it and it operates in complete darkness. In fact, it also does not pay taxes and does not appear in the state budget, as it has an independent budget."
The documents also revealed extraordinary profitability: over 2.1 billion dollars in profits on 5.563 billion in revenue in August 2024, with a margin close to 38%, far exceeding the usual 5% to 15% seen in large international corporations.
Vidal explains that GAESA charges in dollars and pays salaries in Cuban pesos, a currency that has depreciated from 24 units per dollar six years ago to over 500 in the informal market.
The researcher Emilio Morales, president of Havana Consulting Group, describes the holding as an octopus that has taken over the Cuban economy in almost all its profitable sectors over the last 15 years.
According to Morales, real power is concentrated in no more than 15 individuals from the family and military circle of Raúl Castro, who is 94 years old: "They are not public figures; they are very secretive. Each company is assigned an IT specialist, an accountant, and a counterintelligence officer to oversee all accounting operations."
Juan Antonio Blanco, president of the academic platform Cuba Siglo 21, is even more direct: "GAESA was reserved for an elite group of the Castro family and their closest associates. There are a few generals, yes, but not because they were generals, rather because they were unwavering supporters, historically close to Raúl Castro's family."
The secrecy is so extreme that in July 2024, the then Comptroller General Gladys Bejerano was dismissed after 14 years in office following her admission in an interview with the EFE agency that the State had no jurisdiction to audit GAESA.
In 2021, the Minister of the Armed Forces Leopoldo Cintra Frías was relieved shortly after attempting to initiate an internal investigation into the holding.
The contrast between the wealth accumulated by GAESA and the situation of the Cuban people is stark. Almost nine out of ten Cubans live in conditions of extreme poverty or "survival."
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