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The journalist Joankelin Sánchez revealed that Fidel Alejandro Pérez-Oliva Fraga, the alleged twin brother of the Cuban Minister of Foreign Trade and Deputy Prime Minister Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, has been listed as a business advisor for Mandao —Cuba's first private delivery company— from Madrid, Spain, since at least September 2021.
Both are nephews of Fidel Castro and Raúl Castro, which makes this discovery a new indication of the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the Castro clan.
Sánchez published on his Twitter/X account screenshots of Fidel Alejandro's LinkedIn profile, where he is listed as a Mechanical Engineer and International Trade Specialist, based in Madrid.
In that profile, the alleged twin of the minister is listed as a "Business Activity Consultant" for Mandao on a freelance basis, with a hybrid location between Madrid and Cuba.
Mandao describes itself in that same profile as "the first logistics distribution company in the private sector in Cuba, with national reach and established with Cuban and foreign capital."
"Mandao (private business) has as its advisor for business activities the twin brother of the Cuban Minister of Foreign Trade and the great-nephews of Raúl and Fidel Castro," Sánchez wrote, adding: "Everything ends up in the hands of the Castros. Tell me this is pure coincidence. Private?!!?"
Before his association with Mandao, Fidel Alejandro Pérez-Oliva Fraga was the General Director of CRYMSA IMPORT-EXPORT, S.A. in Madrid from November 2014 to June 2021, according to his LinkedIn profile.
The journalist also revealed that Fidel Alejandro is listed as an authorized representative in the corporate records of CECOEX, S.A., a Panamanian corporation established on June 24, 1983, and currently active, according to the OpenCorporates database.
Sánchez noted that these companies would be part of the conglomerate GAE S.A. and would be "unknown even to the core of Castroism."
The discovery is particularly significant due to the position held by his brother: Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga was appointed minister of MINCEX in May 2024 and promoted to Deputy Prime Minister in October 2025, marking the most notable rise of a member of the Castro family in recent years.
Before arriving at MINCEX, Óscar worked under General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, former head of the military conglomerate GAESA, which controls between 60% and 70% of the Cuban economy according to estimates from the United States Department of State.
Mandao was launched in September 2019 in Havana and became the first private micro, small, and medium-sized enterprise of its kind in Cuba on October 7, 2021, following the approval of the Decree-Law on MSMEs.
The company operates in at least six Cuban cities —Havana, Holguín, Matanzas, and Cienfuegos, among others— and connects over seventy restaurants, farmers' markets, bakeries, and confectioneries.
The presence of a direct family member of the Minister of Foreign Trade as an advisor to Mandao from Madrid raises serious questions about the actual independence of the business, in a context where Cuba has cautiously opened up the private sector since 2021, but suspicions remain that the emerging capital is controlled or infiltrated by the regime's elites.
The additional connection of Fidel Alejandro with CECOEX, S.A. —a Panamanian company with active status since 1983— adds a layer of offshore financial opacity to the case, as the MINCEX has recently authorized new foreign companies on the Island without any clarity on the actual selection criteria.
"When will the minister of MINCEX tell Cubans that his twin brother operates businesses within the GAE S.A. conglomerate?" Sánchez asked, summarizing the question that the finding leaves unanswered.
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