The U.S. State Department issued a direct question to the Cuban military conglomerate GAESA this Tuesday: if it has 18 billion dollars in reserves, why does the Cuban people still lack electricity, food, and have crumbling infrastructure?
The Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs published on X an official infographic featuring the seal of the Department of State that contrasts the assets accumulated by the Business Management Group S.A. with the reality that Cubans face daily.
"The economic crisis in Cuba, due to the incompetence of the regime, is no mystery. While the Cuban people suffer from almost constant power outages, crumbling infrastructure, and product shortages, GAESA, managed by the military, controls most of the island's economy and has a financial reserve of $18 billion," the publication states.
The infographic describes these funds as a "war expenses fund" and concludes with a question that summarizes Washington's stance: "Why doesn't GAESA use those funds to meet the needs of the Cuban people?"
The message comes a day after Cuba experienced a new total disconnection of the National Electric System, the sixth of the year, with generation deficits approaching 2,315 megawatts and outages lasting up to 24 hours a day across the country.
GAESA is the economic arm of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Cuba and operates with extreme opacity: it does not publish balance sheets or verifiable audits, and its real power is concentrated in a group of fewer than 15 people.
According to leaked internal documents analyzed by the Miami Herald in August 2025, the conglomerate had accumulated over 18 billion dollars in liquid assets by March 2024, including about 8.5 billion in deposits from its tourism subsidiary Gaviota and another 5 billion among TRD Caribe and Almacenes Universales.
Estimates place GAESA's control over the Cuban economy between 40% and 70% of GDP, while its foreign currency contribution to the state is, according to available analyses, practically nonexistent.
The conglomerate dominates sectors such as tourism, retail, banking, ports, remittances, and mining, capturing the foreign currency income that the regime denies to the population.
The publication this Tuesday is part of a sustained escalation of U.S. pressure on GAESA throughout 2026. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced new sanctions against the conglomerate and its leadership under Executive Order 14404 signed by President Trump.
In June, Washington expanded sanctions on linked entities such as RAFIN S.A., the International Financial Bank, Almacenes Universales S.A., GeoMinera S.A., and Antillana de Acero.
Rubio has described GAESA to the Senate as a "state within a state" that controls about 70% of Cuba's GDP and holds between 14 billion and 17 billion dollars in assets, while the Cuban people lack electricity, food, and medicine.
Analysts have estimated that only 43 million dollars annually would be enough to supply 63 essential medicines in Cuba, and about 250 million to stabilize the national power grid: figures that represent a minimal fraction of what the military conglomerate accumulates without accountability.
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