Cuba: One Big Laundromat

fidel castro is a drug money launderer:

Fourth, and by far the most interesting item of late, is the possibility that Fidel has been money-laundering drug trafficking funds in Swiss banks. This well-argued theory is put forward by Ernesto Betancourt, the Washington-based Cuban-American analyst who was Castro's top economics adviser in the year after the revolution. In my experience, Betancourt has always been right, if controversial, about Cuba.

American drug analysts have usually argued that Castro was not involved in the endemic and poisonous drug trafficking of the Caribbean. But a Senate hearing found that of an estimated $4.3 billion in laundered money worldwide, Cuba accounted for a cash amount of $3.9 billion, discovered in the United Bank of Switzerland. Repeat, in cash, and to be deposited, not exchanged. There are only a few places in the world such money, in cash, could come from; and if from Cuba, as reported by defectors and investigators, it could not come from tourism, most of which is paid for in foreign countries by credit card.

"In my view," Betancourt told me, "what has happened is that Fidel saw a wonderful opportunity to make a few bucks by taking advantage of Cuba's unique competitive advantage for money launderers. Cuba is not a member of the International Monetary Fund (news - web sites) or the Financial Action Task Force, the two international organizations active in fighting money laundering worldwide.

"Therefore, you can deposit your money in Havana's Banco Nacional and your name is kept even more confidential than in a Swiss numbered bank account. The Cubans then deposit your money, along with that of others, in an account of the Cuban government in Switzerland, London, Canada, Spain or Mexico, and there is no way they can trace the money back to you.

It's not about la revolución any more, it's about making money by any means.

If true, and it surely seems to me that it is, then the nation that began with the great revolution of the hemisphere in 1959, and then passed through the "magic realism" stage, has now, by all accounts, become a painfully hopeless and depraved place.

Posted by Val Prieto at December 9, 2004 09:32 AM

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