The American diplomat Jeff Bartos, representative of the U.S. for UN Management and Reform, denounced this Friday before the General Assembly the election of Richard Tur de la Concepción as an expert of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions (ACABQ) for the period 2027-2029, calling the decision a scandal for the taxpayers of the member states.
Tur had been expelled from the United States just days earlier after physically assaulting an official from the U.S. mission at the UN headquarters in New York.
"You chose a thug from the Cuban regime who was expelled to serve on the same commission responsible for overseeing billions of dollars in United Nations expenditures," Bartos stated before the delegates gathered at the General Assembly.
The diplomat went further by highlighting the paradox of the reward: "All of us, by consensus, just rewarded him with a 180,000 dollar a year salary, equivalent to the annual salary of about 1,900 Cuban workers."
Bartos joked about the possibility of Tur holding the position while working remotely from Havana, all while taxpayers from member countries finance his tax-free stipend.
The incident that triggered the crisis occurred on October 27, during the annual debate of the General Assembly on the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
Tur attempted to snatch the phone from J.P. Freire, head of Strategic Communications for the U.S. mission, and swatted at him several times while Freire recorded the confrontation.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed the expulsion order that same night, and the State Department confirmed Tur's departure from U.S. territory on October 29, describing the Cuban regime as "incompetent" and its tactics as "intimidation and oppression."
Far from acknowledging the seriousness of the episode, the regime turned it into propaganda. The Minister of Foreign Affairs Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla organized a welcome event at the MINREX headquarters with about 40-50 people, where he characterized Tur's behavior as "firm and courageous" and "an example for Revolutionary Diplomacy."
After the election of Tur to the ACABQ, Rodríguez Parrilla celebrated it on X as "a new victory for Cuba and a recognition of its outstanding work in favor of multilateralism."
Bartos, on the other hand, framed the Assembly's decision as a betrayal of the reform efforts that the U.S. has promoted over the past year at the UN.
The Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba incorporated Tur into its list of Cuban repressors on October 29, also noting alleged connections to Cuban intelligence: his father, Ricardo Tur Novo, is said to have served as an officer in the MII Intelligence Department under the alias "Roger" in Bolivia, Paraguay, and Jamaica.
The episode occurs during what has been Cuba's worst diplomatic week at the UN in decades. The annual resolution against the embargo was approved on October 28 with only 130 votes in favor, 17 against, and 25 abstentions—compared to the 187 votes received just two years earlier—marking the most unfavorable outcome for Havana since 1992.
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