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The U.S. Department of the Treasury added this Thursday the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba (MINFAR), President Miguel Díaz-Canel, and four other individuals and four additional entities to the List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN), in the third round of sanctions against Cuba in less than a month under Executive Order 14404.
The action, carried out by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), takes place one day before the deadline given to foreign companies to terminate operations with GAESA, the Cuban military conglomerate sanctioned on May 7.
Among the designated individuals are Lis Cuesta Peraza, the wife of Díaz-Canel, born in Holguín on March 28, 1971, who is directly associated with the leader on the SDN list; and Manuel Anido Cuesta, the son of Lis Cuesta and stepson of Díaz-Canel, born in Holguín in 1994 and currently residing in Madrid, Spain.
Alejandro Castro Espín, known as "El Tuerto," the son of Raúl Castro and a key figure in the Cuban intelligence apparatus, born in 1965, was also sanctioned; as well as his son Raúl Alejandro Castro Calis, born in Havana on May 16, 1995, who is linked on the list to his father.
The inclusion of Díaz-Canel and his family environment marks a significant escalation: until this action, the Cuban president and his closest circle were not on the SDN list, although they did face immigration restrictions under Section 7031(c).
Regarding entities, MINFAR —located in the Sierra Maestra Building in the Plaza de la Revolución in Havana and established on October 16, 1959— has been designated as a government entity on the SDN list. Although it was already blocked under the Cuban embargo regulations (CACR), its formal inclusion under EO14404 activates the risk of secondary sanctions against third parties that engage with it.
The other designated entities are the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), founded on September 28, 1960; the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), founded on December 30, 1960; the travel agency Amistur Cuba SA, linked to ICAP; and the mining company Minera La Victoria SA (MLV), dedicated to the extraction of non-ferrous metals and headquartered in the Miramar Business Center in Havana.
This is the third round of designations under EO14404 in less than a month. The second round, on May 18, expanded sanctions to nine high-ranking Cuban officials and the Directorate of Intelligence (DGI/G2).
Executive Order 14404, signed by President Trump on May 1, 2026, uses the authority of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to expand sanctions beyond the traditional embargo, also targeting adult relatives of those designated and creating the risk of secondary sanctions for foreign individuals and companies that operate with the Cuban government.
Alongside the designations, OFAC published Frequently Asked Question 1258 related to Cuba, as part of the same action this Thursday. Several foreign companies had already left the Cuban market due to the deadline to cease operations with GAESA, set for this Friday, June 5th.
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