The First Criminal Chamber of the Provincial People's Court of Santiago de Cuba sentenced three individuals to prison terms ranging from 10 to 15 years for embezzlement of state funds, within the framework of the case 19 of 2026 for administrative corruption.
The criminal scheme was activated after the approval of a bank loan of 20 million pesos to a Business Unit belonging to the Vegetable Canning Company of Santiago de Cuba.
The accused, in mutual agreement, made four fraudulent transfers totaling 5,175,504 pesos to the personal account of one of the implicated individuals, and then divided among themselves 3,986,504 pesos.
Amarilis Téllez Torres, a certified public accountant from the state entity, received the harshest sentence: 15 years of imprisonment. Her accomplice Julio César Palacios Peralta, head of the Financial Accounting Group of the same company, was sentenced to 14 years.
María Luisa Creme Quiroga, an economist at the Rodolfo Rodríguez Benítez Credit and Services Cooperative, received a ten-year sentence. She was the one who received the diverted funds in her personal account.
Creme Quiroga used part of the stolen money to purchase two thousand US dollars from a fourth participant, Kenly Hierrezuelo Téllez, paying over 1,195,000 pesos for that transaction.
Hierrezuelo Téllez was fined 600 installments of forty pesos each for the crime of illegal trafficking of national currency and foreign exchange.
The court classified the acts as the forgery of banking and commercial documents of a continuous nature with the intent to commit embezzlement, a crime that carries a penalty range of eight to twenty years of imprisonment.
As additional penalties, the three main defendants face deprivation of public rights and prohibition from leaving the national territory.
Téllez Torres and Palacios Peralta were also disqualified from holding positions related to economic activity. Additionally, they must compensate the affected entity for the total amount of money embezzled.
The case fits into a pattern of corruption in state-owned enterprises that the regime has attempted to combat with increased judicial visibility. In July 2025, the Cuban regime launched a formal campaign against corruption with warnings of penalties of up to twenty years.
The closest precedent in Santiago de Cuba was in May 2024, when 78 people were arrested for diverting basic products from the Guillermón Moncada port to informal markets, with damages estimated at least nine million pesos.
At a national level, the most emblematic case of 2026 is the life sentence of former Minister of Economy Alejandro Gil Fernández, upheld by the People's Supreme Court in January, for espionage and corruption offenses that included embezzlement, bribery, and money laundering.
In Sancti Spíritus, five officials from an agricultural company were sanctioned in August 2025 for negligence and embezzlement that resulted in losses of over 97 million pesos, highlighting the magnitude of the structural problems within Cuban state enterprises.
Both the sanctioned parties and the Prosecutor's Office can file the appropriate legal appeals against the sentence issued this Sunday.
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