The ambassador Jeffrey A. Bartos, representative of the United States for UN Management and Reform, condemned this Wednesday before the Security Council the privileges of the Cuban elite while the people of the island are suffering from hunger, during an open debate on food insecurity convened by Denmark.
The forum, titled "Food Under Fire: The Role of the Security Council in Mitigating Global and Local Food Crises," provided Bartos with the platform to once again highlight the Cuban regime before the most powerful body of the UN, a few weeks after the diplomatic offensive in July.
"The outrageous accusations from Cuba are an attempt to evade responsibility for decades of corruption and mismanagement," the diplomat stated.
"While the Cuban people face scarcity, the regime's elites live opulent lifestyles, and the government continues to squander resources on luxury tourist complexes and hotels that remain empty," he emphasized.
Bartos also directly targeted the Business Administration Group S.A., GAESA, the business conglomerate controlled by the Armed Forces, citing news reports that indicate this entity and its subsidiaries have accumulated more than 18 billion dollars in bank accounts abroad.
This figure comes from financial documents leaked and analyzed by the BBC and the newspaper Miami Herald, which placed the conglomerate's assets at approximately 17.894 billion dollars in March 2024, with about 14.467 billion deposited in bank accounts.
The U.S. Mission to the UN summarized Washington's stance in strong terms: "While the Cuban people are starving, the leaders of Cuba continue to live extravagant lifestyles."
Bartos also emphasized that the United States remains one of the main providers of food and humanitarian aid to the Cuban people, and accused the regime of lying at the UN to evade responsibility for what he called decades of brutal economic mismanagement.
"It is not surprising that Cuba continues to evade responsibility for decades of brutal economic mismanagement by lying at the UN," concluded the American diplomat.
The intervention on Wednesday is part of a sustained diplomatic campaign by the Trump administration against Havana in multilateral forums throughout 2026.
The most direct precedent was the extraordinary session of the General Assembly on July 7, where Bartos and Ambassador Mike Waltz denounced the blackouts in Cuba and the situation of over 800 political prisoners.
On that occasion, Chancellor Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla attempted to interrupt Bartos's speech twice, and he did the same with Waltz's address, using motions for order that the Assembly's presidency denied.
The UN Assembly then approved the opening of the debate on the embargo with 136 votes in favor, nine against, and 30 abstentions, marking the lowest level of support received by Cuba in over three decades in that type of voting.
The U.S. Southern Command identified GAESA as a regional threat in mid-August, and U.S. lawmakers have called for the freezing of its assets, making the Cuban military conglomerate one of the top targets of Washington's pressure on Havana.
On May 7, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced sanctions against GAESA and its executive president, Brigadier General Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, under Executive Order 14404, signed by President Donald Trump on May 1, titled "Imposition of sanctions on those responsible for repression in Cuba and threats to national security and foreign policy of the United States."
Rubio described the business conglomerate of the FAR as "the heart of the kleptocratic communist system of Cuba," as it controls between 40% and 70% of Cuba's formal economy, including hotels, ports, remittances, and foreign trade.
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