The Cuban regime sentenced four men to prison terms ranging from 15 to 20 years for stealing dielectric oil from a transformer at the electrical substation that supplies the La Habana Dairy Complex in the municipality of Cotorro, as reported this Saturday by the state media Canal Caribe alongside the Attorney General's Office.
The incident occurred on July 14, 2025, when the four accused —Noerlis Agüero Aguirre, Yoel Noel Ortiz Fontes, Andy Travieso Salazar, and Ramón David Cruz Grajales— infiltrated the facility at night with seven containers with a capacity of between 20 and 25 liters.
One of them was an internal guard of the complex and was the one who led the operation. According to the worker Yaima, cited in the official report: "One of them was a guard for us, from here inside the complex, who that day was on duty at the dairy ranch. The other three were neighbors of the dairy complex."
While two were guarding the perimeter, the fourth accused entered the substation and extracted the oil using a wrench to loosen the transformer screw. When attempting to escape, the security personnel detected them and they fled, abandoning the containers with 140 liters of the product.
What led to his capture was the custodian himself: he returned to the location to try to negotiate with the guards for the recovery of the containers, which allowed them to identify and arrest him.
Along with him, his three accomplices were captured and taken to the Department of State Security. The investigation also revealed that the same group had committed a previous theft at that same transformer.
The case, identified as "cause 7 of 2026," was tried in the Chamber of Crimes Against State Security of the Provincial Court of Havana.
The individual sentences were as follows: Agüero Aguirre, 15 years; Ortiz Fontes, 16 years; Travieso Salazar, 18 years; and Cruz Grajales, 20 years of imprisonment. The sentences also include the deprivation of public rights, a prohibition on leaving the country, and the confiscation of assets.
The court classified the theft as sabotage —and not as petty theft— under the Ruling 475/2025 of the People's Supreme Court, which since May 2025 has directed judges to categorize acts affecting the National Electroenergetic System under this definition. The judge in the case explained it without ambiguity: "Anything related to damage that disrupts the normal operation of an electrical plant is of utmost necessity for the country, and therefore falls under the crimes of sabotage."
The consequences of the theft were serious. It was necessary to halt operations for a day at the Dairy Complex and at the mixed company Coralac S.A. (Nestlé Ice Cream), located within the same perimeter, to replace the contaminated product.
A representative of the complex detailed the losses: "We had a loss of 13 million in revenue because several liters of ice cream were no longer produced, both from the Nestlé factory and from the Matilda ice cream factory."
In addition, five tons of powdered milk intended for the basic basket for children from zero to two years old and several tons of cheese were left unpacked. The total economic losses amounted to over 10,272,000 Cuban pesos.
The technical danger was even greater: according to the experts, if just two more gallons of oil had been extracted, the transformer would have exploded.
None of the four convicted individuals had a criminal record, but the court considered that the social harm outweighed that circumstance. The appeal for cassation submitted by the defense was rejected by the Supreme People's Court, leaving the sentences upheld.
This case is part of a criminal offensive by the regime against the theft of electric components: between 2025 and the first half of 2026, the authorities opened more than 460 criminal investigations for offenses against the electrical system, with over 300 of them related to the theft of dielectric oil, recorded in all 15 provinces and 97 municipalities of the country.
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