"Castro's favorite capitalist": how Sherritt challenged Washington for 35 years and lost everything in a week due to Trump

For more than three decades, the Canadian Sherritt International was the largest foreign direct investor in Cuba and the most loyal economic partner of the Cuban dictatorship. The company systematically challenged pressure from Washington, endured a 30-year visa ban for its executives to the United States, and built an empire on the island in nickel, cobalt, oil, and electricity. On May 7, 2026, it all came to an end.

This is the complete story.

The Origins: A Canadian Company on the Brink of Collapse (1927-1990)

Sherritt was not originally linked to Cuba. It was founded in 1927 as Sherritt Gordon Mines Limited to exploit base metals in Manitoba, Canada, as stated in its own corporate history. For decades, it operated copper and nickel mines in northern Canada, built a key refinery in Fort Saskatchewan (Alberta) in 1954, and developed a pioneering ammonia leaching process to treat nickel concentrates.

But by the late 1980s, the company was on the brink of insolvency. Its refining contract with INCO expired in 1990, leaving the Alberta refinery without sufficient ore to operate, according to an analysis published in The Cuban Economy. That same year, financier Ian W. Delaney won a shareholder power struggle and took control of the company, then known as Sherritt Gordon, with the support of figures like Eric Sprott. What he would do next would change the company's history forever.

The Cuban turn: 1991, Fidel's favorite capitalist

In 1991, Delaney arrived in Havana to explore a solution to the supply crisis of his Canadian refinery. The Soviet collapse had plunged the island into the so-called "Special Period", and Fidel Castro urgently needed foreign investors to rejuvenate his collapsed economy. The meeting marked the beginning of a relationship that Bloomberg magazine would soon describe as that of "Fidel's favorite capitalist."

Sherritt began by purchasing Cuban nickel concentrate for its Canadian refinery. The alliance quickly took shape: in December 1994, Sherritt and the General Nickel Company of Cuba (GNC) formalized a 50/50 joint venture that integrated extraction in Moa (Holguín), processing in Cuba, and refining in Alberta. In its first quarter of operation, the joint venture generated profits of $14.3 million on sales of $131 million, according to data published by Bloomberg.

The Cuban government effectively became a foreign investor in Canada by co-owning the Alberta refinery, a fact rarely disclosed by the official propaganda of the dictatorship, as noted in an interview from The Globe and Mail with Ian Delaney. Delaney himself kept a photo of his family with Castro in his office and openly declared: "Cuba is my favorite". That same year, the company rebranded as Sherritt International Corporation and began oil and gas operations on the island.

Expansion and the First Battle with Washington (1996-2000)

In the mid-90s, Sherritt became the largest foreign direct investor in Cuba, aggressively diversifying its presence on the island:

• 1995: Commencement of nickel, cobalt, oil, and gas production in Cuba.
• 1998: Establishment of Sherritt Power Corporation, with a 30% stake in Energas S.A., a trilateral company with CUPET and the Unión Eléctrica to generate electricity using associated gas.
• 1998: Acquisition of 37.5% of Cubacel, the Cuban mobile phone operator, for 38 million dollars.
• Acquisition of shares in a hotel in Havana, a golf course in Varadero, and an agriculture company.

The reaction from Washington was immediate. On July 11, 1996, the State Department notified the executives and major shareholders of Sherritt that they would be barred from entering the United States under the newly signed Helms-Burton Act (Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act), as documented by the Hill Notes of the Canadian Parliament. This was the first application of Title IV of that law against any company in the world. Those affected included their closest family members, spouses, and children.

Canada responded strongly. The government described the measure as "extremely frustrating" and rejected the Helms-Burton Act as "offensive to international trade." Sherritt refused to back down. "We operate legally in Canada, legally in Cuba, legally in every jurisdiction where we work. We do not operate in the United States," stated corporate spokesperson Patrice Best to Los Angeles Times. The visa ban preventing Sherritt executives from entering the United States was never lifted and remained in effect for three decades.

Consolidation as a Pillar of the Cuban Economy (2000-2015)

In the new century, Sherritt continued to be the most significant foreign player in Cuba across three strategic sectors:

Mining (Moa JV): The Moa mine, which had been expropriated in 1960 from the American Moa Bay Mining Company —valued at that time at 88.3 million dollars by the United States Claims Commission— became a world-class operation under joint management.

Energy: Through Energas, Sherritt built gas-fired power generation plants that reached an installed capacity of 506 MW, equivalent to 10-15% of Cuba's national electricity capacity.

Oil: Sherritt operated several fields in northern Cuba (Varadero, Puerto Escondido-Yumurí) and reached a production of around 15,000 to 20,000 barrels of Cuban crude oil daily in the early 2010s. In 2014, the company renewed its contract with CUPET, extending it until 2028.

Business volume (circa 2015-2016)

In 2005, Sherritt and Pebercan Inc. also discovered an offshore deposit on the northern coast with estimates of 100 million barrels. In 2011, Ian Delaney stepped down as CEO—although he remained as chairman of the board—handing the reins to CFO David Pathe. Delaney had previously stated that he wanted to turn Sherritt into the "Canadian Pacific of Cuba."

The Pathe Era, the Debt, and Trump 1.0 (2012-2021)

David Pathe led Sherritt for nearly a decade marked by multiple storms. Under his leadership, the company entered and exited a nickel joint venture in Madagascar (Ambatovy) that left it with $3.5 billion in debt, which Pathe managed to gradually eliminate. Meanwhile, in Cuba, the Cuban partners accumulated increasing unpaid debts: the regime simply did not pay the bills to Sherritt, which continued to record receivables on its balance sheets without collecting them.

In 2019, when the Trump 1.0 administration activated the Title III of the Helms-Burton Act —which had been suspended since the Clinton administration— allowing civil lawsuits in U.S. courts against "trafficking" companies of confiscated property, Sherritt found itself directly in the line of fire. The action hit its stock hard, which dropped from over 10 dollars to less than one dollar, according to The Havana Consulting Group.

The restructuring and the "cobalt swap" (2021-2024)

In June 2021, Leon Binedell, a veteran South African miner with 25 years of experience at Xstrata/Glencore and PwC, took the helm as CEO. In October 2022, he achieved an innovative agreement with Cuban partners: the so-called "cobalt swap," through which Cuba would pay the accumulated debt—362 million Canadian dollars in receivables—not in cash but in finished physical cobalt over five years (2023-2027). The agreement included retroactive penalty clauses of 8% per annum in case of default.

It was an ingenious yet revealing solution to the economic failure of the dictatorship: Cuba had no foreign currency to pay its debt, and Sherritt, aware of the growing demand for cobalt for electric vehicle batteries, seized the opportunity. By the end of 2024, only 25% of the 368 million had been recovered.

The production of the joint venture in 2025 reached 25,240 tons of nickel and 2,728 tons of cobalt (base 100%), according to production data from Sherritt, and Energas generated a total of 799 GWh of electricity. However, the company reported a net loss of $65.4 million in 2025, according to the results published in Financial Times Markets. In December 2025, Binedell left the position and was temporarily replaced by Peter Hancock, former executive of Glencore.

The 2025 crisis: fuel and blackouts

Even before the final blow, Sherritt was deeply affected by the Cuban crisis. In February 2026, the company announced a temporary suspension of its operations in Cuba due to a lack of diesel fuel to power the Moa mine, a direct consequence of the severe Cuban energy crisis, exacerbated by U.S. sanctions that reduced energy imports by 80-90%. The company recorded revenues of only 108.4 million dollars in the third quarter of 2025, with its stock trading at just 0.13 Canadian dollars.

The final blow: Trump's Executive Order and the exit (May 2026)

On May 1, 2026, President Donald Trump signed the Executive Order 14404, invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), expanding sanctions against Cuba to entire sectors: energy, defense, metals and mining, financial services, and security. The crucial point was the introduction of secondary sanctions against foreign financial institutions that conducted business with blocked Cuban entities. For Sherritt, whose business model relied on access to international banking, this was the final verdict.

On May 7, 2026, Sherritt announced the immediate suspension of its direct participation in all joint ventures in Cuba. The company specified that, although it had not yet been formally designated, "the mere issuance of the executive order creates conditions that materially alter the corporation's ability to operate ordinarily."

On that same day, Secretary of State Marco Rubio directly designated Moa Nickel S.A. —the joint venture between Sherritt and the Cuban GNC— under the new sanctions, accusing the Cuban regime of "profiting from assets that were originally expropriated from American individuals and companies." GAESA, the Cuban military conglomerate that controls approximately 40% of the island's economy, and its director Ania Lastres were also sanctioned.

The immediate consequences were devastating:

• Three members of the board of directors have resigned effective immediately: Brian Imrie (chairman), Richard Moat, and Brett Richards.
• Sherritt began the repatriation of all its expatriate personnel in Cuba and requested its Cuban partners to do the same with the Cuban staff displaced in Canada.
• The shares of Sherritt plummeted by 30% on the stock market on the day of the announcement.
• Cuba loses its largest foreign mining partner and between 10% and 15% of its electricity generation, amid a crisis of blackouts.

The legacy: 35 years of a unique chapter

The departure of Sherritt closes a chapter of 35 years in which a Canadian company systematically challenged the pressure from Washington to become the most important foreign economic partner of the Cuban dictatorship. From the first handshake between Delaney and Castro in 1991 to the forced exodus in May 2026, Sherritt extracted more than 3 billion pounds of nickel.

At the same time, it accumulated hundreds of millions in unpaid debt from its Cuban partners, suffered a visa ban on its executives for three decades, and ultimately became a victim of the same tightening of sanctions that its executives had always denounced as "offensive and ineffective."

Castro's "favorite capitalist" is leaving. And with him, one of the last economic pillars propping up an increasingly isolated regime is going away.