While Cuba faces shortages and blackouts, a business conglomerate linked to its Armed Forces manages billions of dollars in the shadows.
Gaesa (SA Business Administration Group) does not have a website, known institutional email or official contact channels.
It does not publish financial statements or appear in the state budget.
And neither the National Assembly of In-model Power nor the Frequent Comptroller’s Office of the Republic can audit its accounts.
This despite the fact that he pockets practically every dollar of the Cuban regime’s most profitable businesses: tourism, remittances, foreign trade or medical missions abroad.
He maintainingbelonging to the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) although also unrelated to its preserve an eye on, had assets in 2024 of at least US$17.9 billion, including more than US$14.4 billion in bank accounts, according to documents leaked to the Miami Herald newspaper.
The BBC was unable to independently verify the data.
Such fortune – greater than the international reserves of countries such as Ecuador, Paraguay or the Dominican Republic – would attest to the magnitude of the economic empire that is Gaesa.
This contrasts with the financial situation of Cuba, a country practically bankrupt with an accumulated drop of 15% in GDP in the last five years and insolvent before its multiple international creditors.
Almost 9 out of 10 Cubans live in conditions of extreme poverty or “survival,” estimated the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights in 2025, and this year the crisis has intensified with blackouts lasting several hours a day and even more shortages of food, fuel and medicine.
In recent months, Donald Trump’s government in the United States has intensified sanctions against the island with a de facto blockade of oil supplies, which has aggravated energy and supply problems.
The contrast between a bankrupt State and the existence of an opaque entity that sucks its main sources of income under the military umbrella raises important questions that we try to answer below: How does it operate? Who is behind? Where do you keep and invest your money? To what extent is this parallel economy responsible for the misery in which Cuba is mired?
BBC Mundo tried to contact the Cuban government in various ways for this article, but did not receive a response.
What is its origin and how does it operate?
“Gaesa is like a great maintainingan octopus that has taken over the Cuban economy in almost all of its profitable sectors during the last 15 years,” explains Emilio Morales, president of the Havana Consulting Community group that studies the Cuban economy.
But Gaesa was born much earlier, in the 1990s, as a mechanism created within the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) to manage companies that operated in foreign currency in the midst of an economic crisis – the so-called Special Period – after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Its initial objective was relatively limited: to generate resources for the Armed Forces themselves through businesses linked to tourism, foreign trade and other sectors that raised dollars.
As time went by, however, that structure transformed into an entire economic empire.
When the deterioration of the health of the until then hegemonic leader Fidel Castro led to the rise to power of his brother Raúl – on an interim basis in 2006 and formally in 2008 – the conglomerate began to expand rapidly and absorb strategic state companies, including the largest of all: Cimex.
“By acquiring Cimex, Gaesa acquired its entire network of companies inside and outside Cuba: corporations located in tax havens like Panama, retail businesses in local currency and in dollars, gasoline stations, real estate businesses, exports, imports, wholesale businesses…”, indicates Emilio Morales.
He maintaining It was gobbling up other profitable companies such as Gaviota and Habaguanex in the tourism sector, part of the web operator Etecsa or the management of Mariel, the largest Cuban commercial port.
He also took control of the International Financial Bank (BFI), which operates Cuba’s international transactions.
In practice, it monopolized almost all businesses that attract dollars: tourism, commerce, telecommunications, banking, remittances, logistics or construction.
Although on paper Cuba operates under a socialist system in which the economy is a state monopoly, Gaesa is not accountable to the National Assembly and keeps its account statements under lock and key.
“Its balance sheets are secret, the Cuban media does not mention it and it works in total darkness. In fact, it does not pay taxes either and does not appear in the State budgets, since it has an independent budget,” economist Pavel Vidal, one of the greatest experts on Cuba’s finances, explains to BBC Mundo.
“It is an economy within another,” he explains.
The secrecy around this shadow empire is such that in July 2024, the then customary comptroller of Cuba, Gladys Bejerano, was dismissed after 14 years in office after admitting – in an apparent oversight during an interview with the EFE agency – that the State did not have jurisdiction to audit Gaesa.
Three years earlier, in 2021, the then Minister of the Armed Forces Leopoldo Cintra Frías was relieved shortly after, according to sources, he tried to promote an internal investigation into the billionaire maintaining attached to your portfolio.
In neither case is it clear whether the dismissals were related to their incursions into Gaesa affairs or whether they were mere coincidences; both were septuagenarians when they were removed from their respective positions.
The business network was for years chaired by customary Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, former son-in-law of Raúl Castro and considered one of the most powerful men in the country.
It was under his command that Gaesa took control of the main state companies until it became the giant it is today.
After the death of Rodríguez López-Calleja in 2022, the presidency of the group passed into the hands of his number two, the brigade commander Ania Guillermina Lastres.
They are the only two known names in this multimillion-dollar business emporium.
So who forms the elite that controls Gaesa and its assets?
Who are its owners?
Identifying the owners and directors of Gaesa is not an easy task: its business structure is extremely opaque, it is unknown who controls its decision-making bodies, it lacks an official organizational chart and a good part of its companies operate through corporate networks that are difficult to trace.
However, journalistic investigations, document leaks and reports from academics who have studied the group for years offer important clues about the elite of this powerful network.
According to researcher Emilio Morales, power is concentrated in a small and select group.
“They do not reach more than 15 people. They are not public names, they are very secretive. Each company has a computer scientist, an accountant and a counterintelligence officer assigned to each company to supervise the entire accounting part,” he reveals, citing the anonymous testimony of a former Gaesa employee.
According to Morales, the maintaining It takes advantage of the military apparatus to ensure the unquestioned preservation of its companies and operations, but those who really rule are not the generals of the Armed Forces.
“In Venezuela there were many archipelagos of power: Diosdado had his, Padrino his, Maduro, Delcy, etc. But the case of Cuba is different. Raúl Castro never wanted the generals to have financial power. The generals are there to preserve an eye on politics,” says Morales.
In this sense, Juan Antonio Blanco, president of the academic platform Cuba Siglo 21, explains to BBC Mundo that Raúl Castro always tried to “prevent the generals from becoming corrupt by having access to large amounts of money.”
“Gaesa was reserved for a small elite group of the Castro family and those closest to him. There are some customaries, yes, but not because they were generals, but because they were unconditional, historically close to Raúl Castro’s family,” he asserts.
Thus, the elite of the business colossus – or part of it – would be the family and military environment of the 94-year-old customary who is officially retired but who, according to analysts, is still the most powerful man in Cuba.
Raúl Castro has four children -Déborah, Mariela, Nilsa and Alejandro Castro Espín- as well as several sons-in-law, grandchildren and close relatives who are linked to key businesses and institutions of power, including his influential former son-in-law Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja who died in 2022, and his grandson and bodyguard Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, known as “El Cangrejo”.
Rodríguez López-Calleja, whom we already mentioned before, was the architect of the great transformation of Gaesa from a limited network of military companies to the gigantic emporium that controls practically all profitable activities in the country.
In the case of “El Cangrejo”, his frequent trips to Panama in the last decade – more than 20 between 2024 and 2025 according to sources, frequently by private plane – have made many link him directly to the millionaire businesses of the maintaining.
As for the actual executive president of Gaesa, Ania Guillermina Lastres, experts believe that her role is mainly operational: she represents and supervises it, but is not part of the core owner with decision-making power and access to its multimillion-dollar funds.
Lastres is the only name that has been made known in this network without an official organizational chart.
To delve into the bowels of Gaesa is to run into a wall, since many of its companies are structured into chains of companies and subsidiaries that hide the true owners of the businesses.
“It may be that the shareholders of a company are another company, and that is another company: a chain of companies so as not to really reach the actual owner. And in the end you find yourself with a name that they put there as a front man,” explains Emilio Morales.
These types of structures, common in tax havens or jurisdictions with low corporate transparency, also make it difficult to follow the money trail.
From this arises another important question: where is Gaesa’s money, and what is it used for?
where is the money
For more than two decades, the conglomerate expanded its presence in key sectors of the country without being able to measure the magnitude of its economic empire.
By keeping its accounts secret and operating outside of public scrutiny, the leak of internal documents published last year by the Miami Herald was a true beam of light by providing specific numbers for the first time.
According to the documents – 22 internal financial statements corresponding to different companies in the group – in March 2024, the conglomerate controlled assets valued at at least US$17,894 million, including US$14,467 million liquid in bank accounts.
These figures exclude Cimex, the largest company in the conglomerate, so it is believed that Gaesa’s fortune would be, at least at that time, even greater.
The papers also revealed surprising profitability: more than US$2.1 billion in profits in August 2024 on US$5.563 million in revenue, which represents a margin close to 38%.
To put the figure in context, large international companies typically have margins of between 5% and 15%, and even in very lucrative industries they do not often exceed 20%.
This responds, according to experts, to several factors: first, Gaesa exploits all sectors that are profitable and generate dollars – for example, tourism and commerce – but not the loss-making ones – such as agriculture, education or public health, apart from medical missions.
Secondly, since Cuba restricts the entry of other corporations in these areas, it operates without competition.
Also, and this is important, it benefits from the duality of exchange rates and currencies: “their income is mainly in dollars, in foreign currency, and they pay salaries in Cuban pesos,” says Pavel Vidal.
The academic José Antonio Blanco, for his part, highlights in this line the advantage of having the umbrella of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.
“For example, if Gaesa is going to build a hotel, as a FAR company it acquires labor and materials from the Ministry of Construction in Cuban pesos, but the money generated by that hotel is received in dollars.”
The difference between both currencies is enormous: the Cuban peso, which six years ago was exchanged at 24 units per dollar, has depreciated drastically and in the informal market it already greatly exceeds 500, according to data from the reference portal El Toque.
Another big unknown is where Gaesa’s heritage is located.
The leaked documents suggest that some of the empire’s multimillion-dollar profits are kept within its own financial system, making it difficult to trace its final destination.
According to Pavel Vidal, the group also manages resources that in practice function as parallel international reserves of the country, although they are not under preserve an eye on the Central Bank of Cuba.
“I worked at the Central Bank and I know that the international reserves in Cuba are not managed directly by that institution, but by the International Financial Bank (BFI), which is owned by Gaesa. Therefore, in those US$14.5 billion we must understand what those reserves are,” he explains.
And he points out: “I call them international reserves to give them a name, but strictly speaking they should not be called that, because they are not under the preserve an eye on of the monetary authority, which is the one who should support the currency, the banking system and the debt.”
Regarding the whereabouts of these reserves, Vidal estimates that “they are probably diversified: part in the BFI, but also in international banks – Russian, Chinese… – and probably in tax havens.”
“There is no precise information about this but, given that part of Gaesa’s logic is to avoid sanctions, it is reasonable to think that these reserves are quite diversified and that a part is structured in such a way that it is not exposed to sanctions,” he concludes.
It must be clarified that the only financial reports of the maintaining that have come to light date back to 2024, so it is unknown how much his assets amount to today.
We pose the last question: what responsibility would Gaesa have in the disastrous situation of the Cuban economy?
The influence on the Cuban crisis
The weight of the conglomerate in Cuba’s economy is enormous: according to calculations by Pavel Vidal and other experts, its transactions could represent the exorbitant figure of 40% of the country’s total GDP.
This financial power has allowed it to maintain an investment strategy that, according to critical voices, is totally disconnected from the most urgent needs of the population.
While the Cuban economy suffers decades of crisis, with dysfunctional productive sectors and deteriorated infrastructure, Gaesa has concentrated a large part of its resources on activities more aimed at earning foreign currency than, for example, revitalizing agricultural and industrial production.
In recent years, the conglomerate has promoted an ambitious expansion of the tourism business, especially in Havana, where new and imposing hotels have been built that contrast with the increasing deterioration of the streets and buildings in their surroundings.
All this despite the fact that fewer and fewer tourists visit Cuba: arrivals have plummeted from the maximum of 4.7 million visitors in 2018 to 1.8 million last year, when shortages and blackouts were already pointing to the extreme levels experienced today.
According to Pavel Vidal, concentrating resources on the tourism business means that other strategic areas receive less investment, which limits the country’s ability to reactivate productive sectors that alleviate chronic food shortages or modernize the increasingly dysfunctional electricity generation industry.
“The investment in tourism was very disproportionate and investments in agriculture, in the electrical network and in the maintenance of generation plants were neglected. That partly explains what is happening now,” illustrates the economist.
Another example of Gaesa’s keeping an eye on the country’s main sources of income are international medical missions, Cuba’s most lucrative business in recent years, even above tourism.
Part of this income, according to experts consulted by BBC Mundo, is channeled to companies in the military business network that, under this extra special system, absorb a good part of the foreign currency that enters the country.
Added to this is the fact that Gaesa has assets (or at least it did in 2024) for an amount that would allow it to modernize the agricultural sector – which today barely produces 20% of national food consumption – and restore the country’s electricity generation industry.
The recent pressures from the United States government on a Cuba in an extreme situation have led many to think that the communist regime in force since 1959 could fall or undergo a drastic and forced change.
If so, it is difficult to guess what would happen to the opaque economic emporium of the Armed Forces built during the last three decades in parallel to the State.
“If there is a transition, I imagine that one of the first measures will be to find the money from Gaesa, because it will be greatly needed for a stage of stabilization, of reconstruction,” predicts Emilio Morales, president of Havana Consulting Community.
click hereto look more stories from BBC News World.
Subscribe hereto our new newsletter to receive a selection of our best content of the week every Friday.
You can also follow us on YouTube, instagram, TikTok, x, Facebookand in our new whatsapp channel.
And remember that you can receive notifications in our app. Download the latest version and activate them.
- “We cook with charcoal and firewood for 3 families in the neighborhood”: how Cubans experience the greatest fuel rationing in decades and how it is similar to the Special Period
- Who is Raúl G. Rodríguez Castro “El Cangrejo”, the grandson of Raúl Castro who emerges as Cuba’s interlocutor with the United States.
- How the historic rivalry between the US and Cuba was born
