176 measures to steal 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 the Soviet leaders used to seize everything when the USSR collapsed. Only this time, 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 the official media, it was referred to as historic. They spoke of openness, decentralization, and recognizing the market. Some analysts celebrated it as a step towards economic normalcy.

It isn't.

When one sits down to read the 176 measures calmly, 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 took advantage of the chaos following the collapse of the USSR to seize the factories, banks, mines, and lands that were supposedly "the people's." The result was the Russian oligarchy: a handful of people who amassed the wealth that took generations to build by three hundred million Soviets in just five years.

In Cuba, the process will be more orderly, quieter, and more difficult to reverse. But the final destination is the same.

First, the history lesson

To understand what lies ahead for Cuba, one must comprehend 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 was going to distribute that wealth among the people. Each Russian citizen was given a piece of paper—they called it a "voucher"—which they could use to buy shares in the state-owned companies that were going 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, and each oil well was worth. The average citizen had no idea. Many were in urgent need of money to buy food. So the directors and Party officials would buy the vouchers for almost nothing, accumulating thousands and thousands of those papers, and with them, they would take over the companies.

In five years, the leaders of the Party became 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 stock company."

This is the most important of all, although hardly anyone is discussing it. What it says, in simple terms, is the following: the companies that are now owned by the Cuban state will issue shares. These shares will be available for purchase. And the document states that both companies and private individuals will be able to buy them.

Who is going to buy those shares? Those 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 companies: those in the sugar industry, laboratories, tourism, and imports. These individuals have an intimate understanding of the value of each company they control. They are aware of which ones are in debt, which ones have assets, what contracts have just been signed, and which facilities are about to be revalued.

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

National Asset Valuation Program

Before privatization, things must be priced. The package creates a program to inventory all state assets and assign them a value.

The problem is who determines that value.

In Cuba, there are no independent judges. There is no free press that can investigate. There is no oversight body that does not answer to the Party. Thus, the people who evaluate the companies are appointed by the same apparatus that will later benefit from those evaluations.

In Russia, they deliberately undervalued assets. An oil refinery worth a billion dollars was sold for ten million. The person who bought it made the deal of the century. The Soviet people paid the difference.

The same document also discusses "leasing underutilized assets in the long term." When the lease lasts 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 limit on extension."

Today, those who receive land from the state in Cuba must cultivate it to maintain the right to use it. The new measure eliminates that requirement and also sets no limit on how many hectares a single person or company can request.

Without a limit on extension and without any obligation to cultivate it, the door is wide open for those involved to amass thousands of hectares, not for food production, but for speculation. To wait for the land to increase in value and sell it later.

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

"Private banks"

The package authorizes the creation of private banks in Cuba.

Whoever controls credit controls who can grow and who cannot. If the licenses to create private banks inevitably go to the same people, as one would logically expect in a dictatorship lacking transparency, those banks will lend money to their own owners to buy more businesses, while placing obstacles in the way of anyone deemed untrustworthy.

In Russia, the oligarchs created their own banks, used people's savings to lend money to themselves, bought state-owned enterprises with that money, and when the banks collapsed, depositors lost everything. The entrepreneurs didn’t: they had already transferred the assets.

"Successive devaluations. Companies that cannot withstand 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 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 collapse due to devaluation will be available at bargain prices. Their assets will be bought by those who have money. Those who have money are the connected ones.

"Tourist assets: approval on a case-by-case basis"

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

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

There is no public bidding. There are no transparent criteria. There is no open competition. Each hotel, each key, each tourist 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 is best acquainted with the official who signs.

Who will be the Cuban oligarchs?

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

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

The very package creates an "Investment Program for Cubans Residing Abroad". Some of these Cubans are migrant workers 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 the door to return with benefits.

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

There is one detail that distinguishes what is happening in Cuba from what occurred in the USSR, and that detail is not favorable for the Cubans.

In the emerging Russia, the process was chaotic. The state collapsed. Amid 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, silent, and completely legal transfer —legal according to the laws they themselves write— of the assets of the Cuban people into the pockets of the nomenklatura.

When it is over, the new owners will have deeds. They will have titles. They will have lawyers. And any attempt to reverse it will be met with the same response used by the Russian oligarchs when someone tried to take back 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 a skilled human capital. All of this today is, in theory, owned by the Cuban people.

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

Into 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 were no longer recoverable.

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