Corruption in Cuba: Where there’s smoke…

HAVANA – There are cheap thieves, nickel and dimers, and those that turn out expensive. In Cuba this phenomenon is absolutely not new. What puts the issue in vogue recently is the unusually great attention it is receiving from the public media.

Before, we knew of the high school teacher who charges students for letting them go before the end of classes; as well as the dismissed minister who sold key information to foreign firms, or the manager of an importing company that receives a commission from certain firms that do not sell Cuba its best goods, etc. And how do we know this? Because of rumors, from more or less reliable sources, with ‘who knows what’ kind of information.

Cuba has not escaped notorious corruption cases in the past that scandalized the country. In the 1980s, for example, there were the cases of transport Minister Diocles Torralbas, and also that of Luis Orlando Dominguez, who was then director of the Union of Young Communists.

Probably, the little we know of those cases is as bad as knowing nothing of them.

Data without context is a needle in the haystack

Last March Bohemia, the magazine, analyzed the issue of corruption using data provided by the Attorney General’s Office, and a decision taken by the Supreme People’s Court. Common practices and how they are typified later in crimes, as well as the most recurrent scenarios, do not confirm whether the phenomenon has taken root. The chronic absence of public information — contextualized, usable, and not random — about the control processes and the fight against illegalities does not allow it.

Unlike a 2016 figure published in Cubadebate given by the Comptroller General of the Republic (CGR) that reported that 58 percent of special audits were evaluated badly and poorly, in this latest report it is easier to contextualize how crimes occur.

Just a few days ago we also learned from the CGR that in 2017 there was an uptick in economic violations (approximately 1,012, or 280 more than the previous year), committed in cases of ‘administrative corruption’ associated with the misuse of the State budget in numerous public entities, and that only 64% of the country is being audited by the auditor’s staff mostly due to the low salaries received by these professionals.

They also added that the money lost in the budgeted activity exceeded 300 million in ‘total’ currency (Convertible Pesos, Cuban Pesos?).

At the end of the day, without a true and public rendering of accounts, it is practically impossible to know the real damage caused, which, as popular wisdom assumes, can only be this problem’s tip of the iceberg — in other words, information given via eye dropper.

The case of the BioCubaFarma analyzed during the National Assembly session of the People’s Power last December was notable because of its economic importance and its social relevance on the life of Cuban citizens. During the session it was stated that “this business organization processes 499 of the 505 of national products attributed to them. (…) Sustaining exports of more than 400 million dollars, that saves the country more than 2 billion.”

Among the most striking figures was that losses there were estimated at 575,345 pesos (again the monetary duality existing on the island is invoiced in the quantification of damages, but also of benefits); in addition, 30 burglaries or attempts to divert medicines had occurred by the end of November 2017, a number that also exceeds that of 2016, according to Tania Urquiza Rodríguez, vice president of the organization.

This occurred in the midst of a serious drug supply crisis, at a time when the sick had a hard time finding prescribed medicine in the drugstores and an inhumane traffic of these products increased in the black market. In the end, public health authorities reported a gradual recovery, helped by the import of a greater quantity of medicines which contributed in mitigating the great shortage of supplies last December.

Causes and solutions

To counteract corruption, in 2009 the Comptroller General’s office was created, with a seat on the Council of State. “Since then, it has investigated cases of corruption in the food sector, civil aviation, telecommunications, tobacco and the nickel industry,” wrote journalist Marc Frank.

What stood out in the well-known cases of bus drivers in Havana (“more tempting salary offers and schedules were offered in other work centers”), as in the aforementioned auditors, and that of so many other Cuban workers, was the fundamental issue of low wages. Without couching this as the sole reason justifying criminal and immoral behavior, not to contextualize the circumstances in which these events occur is also a fault.

The increase in price of necessary products and the fall of the purchasing power of the ‘legal income’ of the population, published Bohemia, “are objective factors that impact the performance of unscrupulous people.”

Presently, according to the authorities of the Office of the Prosecutor who spoke with Bohemia, corrupt practices have connections abroad through emigrants, returnees and foreigners; and they have extended their tentacles within the private sector of the economy with “a marked corrupting character on managers and officials of state entities.”

Journalist Fernando Barral has stressed that sometimes the corrupt are not isolated individuals, but networks that “also extend to other entities and levels, with which working relationships exist.” The embezzlement case that occurred at the Empresa Provincial de Acopio de Sancti Spíritus, made public this year, is an example of this.

Esteban Morales, a political scientist, insists that “the fight against corruption is not primarily, or initially, a battle against the corrupt. It is a cultural battle.” And that is fundamental. Since the sharp economic crisis of the nineties in Cuba the concept of “surviving” or “fight to subsist” became a euphemism to steal for a large number of people.

Even when it is not justifiable under any circumstance, the many involved, and the amount of losses due to their thievery, makes an important difference in terms of damages done, and the culture and values of those individuals.

It is true that when you compare corruption in Cuba to other Latin American countries, we seem to be nowhere near their problem. But when you compare us based on the resources that these other countries possess, our level of corruption might affect us at an even greater balance than what is perceived.

Ultimately, the fact that corruption on the island seems small compared with others — as well as the violence or other issues used to compare us – does not mean that we should not become better aware and therefore inform ourselves, and take essential preventive measures. And now that we have seen the phenomenon sharply focused, it is valid to ask ourselves if what we now have is a second economy that operates in a gray area and is nourished by corruption in State enterprises and in small and medium-sized, private companies.