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Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, the brigadier general who took the reins of Cuba's largest business conglomerate following the death of Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, was sanctioned this Thursday by Secretary of State Marco Rubio along with GAESA and the mining company Moa Nickel S.A., under the executive order signed by President Donald Trump on May 1.
Lastres Morera took on the interim executive presidency of the Business Management Group of the FAR (GAESA) following the death of Major General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja on July 1, 2022, former son-in-law of Raúl Castro and architect of the conglomerate for 26 years, and was officially confirmed in the position in February 2023.
Born on August 19, 1962, in Marianao, Havana, Lastres Morera graduated with a Gold Seal from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Havana with a degree in Economic Planning, and she spent her entire career within the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR).
Her rise was gradual: she went through the Directorate of Economic Collaboration and Material Fund, the Minister's Office, the Fifth Section as a first officer, the Deputy Head of the Special Economic Section, and the Second Deputy Head of the Fifth Department, until she became the First Executive Vice President of GAESA before assuming the presidency.
She has been a deputy in the National Assembly of People's Power since 2018, a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba since 2021, and was appointed a member of the Council of State on July 17, 2024.
Rubio described GAESA as "the heart of Cuba's kleptocratic communist system" and noted that the conglomerate controls between 40% and 70% of the Cuban formal economy, including tourism, foreign currency trading, remittances, and banking.
A leak of 22 internal financial documents revealed that GAESA managed up to 18 billion dollars in current assets as of March 2024, operating with total opacity and having its own parallel tax office, the OATFAR, exempt from the national system.
The family background of Lastres Morera has generated additional controversy: his sister Adys arrived in the United States in January 2023 and manages real estate businesses in Florida, while his daughter Any Rodríguez Lastres resides in Panama and works in the international port sector after starting her career at the Mariel Container Terminal.
Journalistic investigations also reveal that Lastres Morera owns 75% of the shares of Allicom Limited, a company registered in the United Kingdom, and is listed as the owner of apartments in Panama.
"Put the name in Google and companies, records, links appear. Here we are talking about where the money stolen from the Cuban people is hidden," noted Luis Domínguez, a researcher for the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba.
The predecessor of Lastres Morera, Rodríguez López-Calleja, had already been sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in September 2020 for leading a conglomerate that, according to Washington, financed repression in Cuba and interference in Venezuela.
The sanctions announced this Thursday are part of a maximum pressure campaign that, since January 2026, has imposed over 240 sanctions against the regime, intercepted at least seven tankers, and reduced the island's energy imports by between 80% and 90%.
Rubio warned that "additional appointments can be expected in the coming days and weeks."
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