The banking expert Alberto Luzárraga, who has 35 years of experience in the sector in the U.S. and Latin America, asserted this Friday in an interview with CiberCuba that a future transitional government on the Island should declare a significant portion of the external debt as "odious" and refuse to pay it, arguing that it would be unjust to sacrifice the Cuban people for decades to settle obligations incurred by an illegitimate and corrupt regime.
"We are not going to sell out to Cuba. We are going to declare part of those odious debts," stated Luzárraga, who explained that the concept of odious debt applies to those "incurred with a regime that is not legitimate and that everyone knew was not legitimate and could not pay."
Luzárraga was direct in pointing out the responsibility of the creditors: "There are many people who have lent to Cuba for political reasons and who knew it was a country with the record for defaults in the world."
Faced with that reality, he posed a rhetorical question: "Are we really going to sacrifice the people of Cuba for 50 years to pay a man who was not only reckless but, in many cases, corrupt? It cannot be done."
Regarding the accumulated debt with Venezuela for the oil supplied over the years, he dismissed it outright: "How much is owed to Venezuela for all the oil?"
Luzárraga recalled that Russia experienced a similar situation when the Soviet Union supplied oil to Cuba for decades and accumulated a debt that Moscow was never able to collect. In July 2014, Putin forgave 90% of that debt, amounting to about $32 billion out of a total of $35 billion. "They had no other choice," Luzárraga summarized.
Regarding the procedure for declaring a odious debt, the economist was clear: it is essentially unilateral. "I am the debtor, it is an odious debt, I won't pay. What do you want? Do you want to sue me? Fine, go ahead and sue me. When we start digging into the lawsuit to see what’s there, all the irregularities and strange things they did will come to light."
Luzárraga added an accounting argument that reinforces his position. Most of the Cuban debts with banks have already been accounted for as losses due to the requirements of the banking regulators in each country.
He explained the mechanism: after six months without payment, the bank must write down 10% as losses; after one year, it increases to 50%; and after two years, it reaches 100%. "Most of those debts owed to banks are already written off the books and recorded as losses," he pointed out.
That means that any payment Cuba made to those creditors would not settle a debt, but instead generate profits for entities that have already absorbed the loss.
In January 2026, Cuba acknowledged its difficulties in making payments and requested new favorable conditions from the Paris Club, an organization with which it has systematically defaulted on payments since 2019 and has requested moratoria in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2025.
The total external debt of Cuba is estimated to be between 28.5 and 34.8 billion dollars, equivalent to over 40% of GDP, according to some estimates, and up to 108.8% according to others.
"In reality, recovering money from Cuba would be beneficial. Well, at this point, with a bankrupt and starving country, we are not going to provide benefits to anyone who does not need them. It’s as simple as that," concluded Luzárraga.
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