The Cuban writer José Manuel Fernández Pequeño described in an interview with Tania Costa for the program Transición en Cuba the existence of a vast network of businesses run by the Cuban regime abroad under third-party names, and compared the financial sophistication of the elite to that of organized crime.
"The Sicilian mafia are miserable (compared to the Cuban regime). Everything there is calculation, everything, everything, everything."
Fernández Pequeño, a narrator, essayist, and professor born in Bayamo with around twenty published books, lived 18 years in the Dominican Republic before moving to Miami, which gives him a firsthand perspective on the regime's operations in the Caribbean.
During his stay in Santo Domingo, the writer witnessed firsthand how that hidden machinery operated. "There were a lot of Cuban businesses. Well, they didn't appear to be Cuban businesses." A childhood friend, also from Bayamo, arrived in the Dominican capital with a specific mission: "What he did was audit Cuban companies listed under people's names."
One of the cases recounted is particularly revealing. A businessman connected to the regime established "a true empire with spirulina, this medicine made from algae" in Santo Domingo and lived in a mansion that Fernández Pequeño describes as "a castle" near his home. One day, that man disappeared without a trace.
"He left the cars, left the house on, and disappeared. No one knew what happened to him." The writer concludes that the businessman fled with the assets: "Apparently, he also vanished from the Cuban government."
The reach of that network, according to Fernández Pequeño, extends far beyond the Caribbean. "That is a structure with many roots, many of which we don't even know. And in Europe, don't even get me started."
This testimony aligns with what journalistic investigations have documented about GAESA, the Cuban military conglomerate and its network of opaque companies abroad. According to internal leaks analyzed by El Nuevo Herald and economist Pavel Vidal, GAESA controls 95% of the country's foreign currency financial transactions, and its revenues are 3.2 times greater than the annual budget of the Cuban government.
The Panama Papers revealed that Cuba used the firm Mossack Fonseca since the 90s to create companies in Panama, the Bahamas, and the British Virgin Islands, with companies such as CIMEX, BB Naft Trading S.A., and Técnica Hidráulica S.A., among others.
In May 2026, the United States formally sanctioned GAESA and set a deadline until June 5 for foreign companies to cease operations with the conglomerate, under threat of secondary sanctions.
Fernández Pequeño also addressed the regime's survival strategy in the interview with a sharp statement: "They are buying time. It's a fact, not an opinion. They are buying time." This time, he warns, comes at a direct human cost for the population: "For what? Time for what? So they can be extracted, so they can be killed, so they can be imprisoned."
The writer identifies November as the first key milestone in that strategy of delay, both for the Cuban leadership and for the Venezuelan one: "The closest is November. In other words, the first 'let's see what happens' is set for them in November."
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