CUBA: Gov’t Admits Sanctions, but Dismisses Reports of Corruption

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jun 10 1999 (IPS) - The Cuban government dismissed Thursday reports of corruption implicating tourism officials, although it confirmed that “disciplinary actions” had been taken.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Alejandro Gonzalez said “the errors were not linked to incidents of corruption,” and gave his assurances that there was no “traumatic or chaotic situation in the tourism sector.”

The first official reference to the scandal involving Cuba’s top foreign-exchange earner, the leisure industry, coincided with an upbeat report on the growth of tourism activity this year, published in Thursday’s edition of Granma, the official daily newspaper of the ruling Communist Party.

The report – according to which Cuba will climb further up the ranking of leading Caribbean tourism destinations this year, with 1.7 million arrivals, and two million next year – was read by local observers as an implicit show of support for Tourism Minister Osmany Cienfuegos.

It is widely believed in Cuba that the noose is tightening around Cienfuegos, a long-time leader of the Cuban revolution, and a close collaborator of President Fidel Castro.

A few days before the fifth Communist Party congress in October 1997, the removal of Cienfuegos was rumoured to be imminent, although nothing ever happened.

Gonzalez referred Thursday specifically to developments in the governmental Rumbos tour and leisure agency, several officials of which he said had “committed acts of indiscipline” and were sanctioned. He clarified that only Rumbos was involved, and added that he was not familiar with the details of either the “errors” or the disciplinary measures taken.

But sources consulted by IPS, who wished not to be named, said around 10 executives from three companies with ties to the tourism sector had been removed from their posts, and that more than one high-level official had been sanctioned in the past few days.

What the sources described as an “open secret” did not appear in the Cuban state-monopolised press, and Gonzalez’s remarks Thursday were the first official reference to the matter.

Besides Rumbos, the “purge” also reportedly affected the Horizontes hotel chain and the hotel division of Cubanacan, Cuba’s largest tourist company, which operates hotels and tours, and has offices abroad.

Another aspect of the scandal involved a joint venture between Rumbos and the Mexican tourism firm Cubamor, which ran into trouble after Cubamor advertised in Internet the variety of options available in Cuba – including young, attractive female escorts.

Cuba’s Prensa Latina press agency issued a dispatch Wednesday stating that a group of Cuban tourism businesses had “decided to cancel all hotel and other services that had been offered to the Mexican company” since October 1998.

A source cited by the press agency said “the decision was a response to irregularities by Cubamor which attempted, through various means, to stimulate so-called sex tourism toward the island.”

The rumours about sackings in Rumbos came on the heels of the May 28 removal of foreign minister Roberto Robaina. The tone of the official communique reporting the minister’s replacement by Felipe Perez Roque, a member of the Council of State, was considered unusually brusque, and sparked a wave of rumours as to the reasons underlying the measure.

Robaina’s wife, Maria Elena Garcia, is among the Rumbos officials with possible ties to the Cubamor agency, and was perhaps one of those sanctioned.

But Foreign Ministry spokesman Gonzalez said “the wife of our ‘compañero’ Robaina has not been dismissed from her job, and has nothing to do with the disciplinary measures taken in Rumbos.” He added that the former minister was “on vacation, in his home, awaiting the new tasks he will be assigned.”

Sources close to the government said the removal of Robaina from his post was linked to “errors” in his performance as foreign minister, rather than to problems of integrity, corruption or abuse of power.

Local observers said that underlying the tourism scandal was a policy designed to crack down on corruption, embezzlement of public funds, bribery and participation by public officials in drug trafficking, in line with legal reforms approved in the past few years.

The rumour mill also has it that in the past few days officials were sacked in the biotechnology industry and the Caracol chain of government-run stores.