176 measures to seize a country

What the Cuban regime presented on June 18 as "the great economic transformation of Cuba" is, at its core, the same trick that Soviet leaders used to take everything when the USSR collapsed. This time, however, they are doing it more carefully.

On June 18, 2026, the Cuban dictatorship presented to the National Assembly a package of 176 economic measures. In official media, it was referred to as historic. They spoke of openness, decentralization, and recognizing the market. Some analysts celebrated it as a step toward economic normalization.

It isn't.

When one sits down to read the 176 measures carefully, one by one, a pattern emerges that is nothing new. It is exactly what happened in Russia between 1992 and 1998, when the leaders of the Soviet Communist Party used the chaos of the fall of the USSR to seize control of the factories, banks, mines, and lands that were supposedly "the people's." The result was the Russian oligarchy: a handful of individuals who accumulated the wealth that took generations to build for three hundred million Soviets in just five years.

In Cuba, the process will be more orderly, quieter, and harder to reverse. But the final outcome remains the same.

First, the history lesson

To understand what is coming in Cuba, one must understand how the Soviets created their oligarchs.

When the USSR collapsed, the state owned absolutely everything: factories, banks, land, hotels, ports, oil refineries. Yeltsin's government announced that it would distribute that wealth among the people. Each Russian citizen was given a piece of paper —called a "voucher"— which they could use to purchase shares in the state-owned companies that were to be privatized.

It sounds nice. The reality was different.

The directors of those companies —who were the same party officials as always— knew exactly how much each factory, each bank, each oil well was worth. The ordinary citizen had no idea. Many needed urgent money to buy food. So the directors and party officials bought the vouchers for nearly nothing, accumulated thousands and thousands of those papers, and with them, they took over the companies.

In five years, the heads of the Party became the owners of empires. The rest of the Soviets were left in misery.

Now, what the Cuban paper says

The 176 measures are written in the tangled language of bureaucrats. But when one translates them into real Spanish, the message is clear.

"Transform the state-owned enterprise into a joint-stock company."

This is the most important of all, although almost nobody is discussing it. What it says, in plain terms, is this: the companies that are currently state-owned in Cuba will issue shares. Those shares will be available for purchase. The document states that both companies and individuals will be able to buy them.

Who is going to buy those stocks? The ones who are in charge of the companies right now.

In Cuba, there are so-called "big bosses of the state conglomerates" — those who oversee groups of state-owned enterprises: those in the sugar industry, those in laboratories, those in tourism, those in imports. These individuals know from the inside how much each company they control is worth. They are aware of which ones have debts, which have assets, which contracts have just been signed, and which facilities are about to be revalued.

When the shares hit the market, they will buy first and better. With information that the average citizen does not have. Just like the Soviet directors did in 1992.

"National Asset Valuation Program"

Before privatization, it is necessary to price things. The package creates a program to inventory all state assets and assign them value.

The problem is who assigns that value.

In Cuba, there are no independent judges. There is no free press that can investigate. There is no regulatory agency that does not obey the Party. Therefore, the people who assess the companies are appointed by the very apparatus that will then benefit from those assessments.

In Russia, they deliberately undervalued assets. An oil refinery worth one billion dollars was priced at ten million. Whoever bought it made the deal of the century. The Soviet people paid the difference.

The same document also discusses "leasing underutilized assets for the long term." When the lease is for fifty or ninety-nine years, it is no longer a lease. It is ownership by another name.

"Usufruct of the land for an indefinite period, without limitation on size."

Today, anyone who receives land from the state in Cuba must work it to retain the right to use it. The new measure removes this requirement. Moreover, it places no limit on how many hectares a single person or company can request.

With no limit on size and no obligation to cultivate it, the door is wide open for those connected to accumulate thousands of hectares, not to produce food, but to speculate. To wait for the land to increase in value and then sell it.

Cubans who have been asking for a plot of land to grow malanga for years will continue to wait. Those who know the official who signs the applications will receive the best lands without ever having to work them.

"Private banks"

The package authorizes the creation of private banks in Cuba.

Who controls credit controls who can grow and who cannot. If licenses to create private banks end up —as one would logically expect in a dictatorship lacking transparency— in the hands of the usual suspects, those banks will lend money to their own owners so they can buy more businesses, while placing obstacles in the way of those deemed untrustworthy.

In Russia, the oligarchs created their own banks, used people's savings to lend money to themselves, purchased state companies with that money, and when the banks collapsed, the depositors lost everything. The businessmen did not: they had already transferred the assets.

"Successive devaluations. Companies that cannot endure will be liquidated."

This phrase from the exchange package is the one that can cause the most harm to everyday people.

A sharp devaluation destroys the value of savings in pesos. Those who have their money saved in Cuban pesos wake up poorer. Those who have their savings in dollars or in real assets—land, equipment, properties—lose nothing.

Who knows when the devaluation will happen? The same people who will order it. They protect themselves first. The rest find out later.

And the companies that fail due to devaluation will be available at rock-bottom prices. Their assets will be purchased by those who have money. Those who have money are the connected ones.

"Tourist assets: case-by-case approval"

Tourism in Cuba—hotels, cays, marinas—is now in the hands of GAESA, the business conglomerate of the Armed Forces. The new package allows for "concessions of areas and the sale of properties" in tourist zones.

And then the phrase that says it all appears: "case-by-case approval."

There is no public tender. There are no transparent criteria. There is no open competition. Each hotel, each key, each marina will be awarded by the decision of an official, without anyone being able to question or appeal it. The best key in Cuba will not go to the best project. It will go to the one who knows the official who signs the best.

Who will be the Cuban oligarchs?

There's no need to guess much. The profile is clear.

The high-ranking officials of state-owned companies have insider information to buy cheaply and effectively. The military personnel of GAESA, who already control tourism, imports, and a significant portion of retail trade, are set to receive legal titles of ownership for assets they already manage de facto. Party officials with years of access to foreign currency and family abroad will invest the money they accumulated overseas.

The package itself creates a "Investment Program for Cubans Residing Abroad". Some of these Cubans are working emigrants who have nothing. But others are relatives of officials who have been taking money out of the country for years. For them, this program is a doorway back with benefits.

The difference with the USSR: here, the disorder is under control

There is a detail that distinguishes what is coming in Cuba from what happened in the USSR, and that detail is not good for Cubans.

In the fledgling Russia, the process was chaotic. The state collapsed. Amidst the disorder, some actors with no direct ties to the Party also found opportunities. There was violence. There were surprises.

In Cuba, the process is being designed from above by those who have been controlling everything for sixty years. There will be no chaos. There will be no collapse. There will be an orderly, quiet, and completely legal transfer—legal according to the laws they themselves write—of the assets of the Cuban people to the pockets of the nomenklatura.

When it's over, the new owners will have deeds. They will have titles. They will have lawyers. And any attempt to reverse this will face the same response that the Russian oligarchs used when someone tried to take away what they had stolen: "It's all legal. Here are the papers."

What is at stake

Cuba is a small country, but its assets are considerable: agricultural land, coastal shoreline, hotel infrastructure, industrial facilities, and skilled human capital. All of this is, in theory, today owned by the Cuban people.

The 176 measures are the mechanism to transfer that wealth to a select few. Not to the entrepreneur who built their business from scratch, not to the farmer who has been working the land for decades, not to the doctor who earned pesos their whole life.

In the hands of those who were already in power. Only now with titles of ownership.

The Soviets took ten years to understand what had happened to them. By then, the assets no longer had a recoverable owner.

Cuba has the advantage that the process has just begun. And it has the example of Russia to avoid repeating the mistake.