From Miami to Madrid
From
Miami to Madrid Read Spanish Version
The
time bomb set by Mas Canosa and Aznar
By
Manuel Alberto Ramy
maprogre@gmail.com
Adolfo
Jiménez — 55, born in Ávila, Spain, married, two
daughters — got up one morning as usual to go to the
Telecommunications Installation Systems (SINTEL), where he worked in
the construction of communications networks. But it was not an
ordinary day for him or several thousand colleagues.
Picking
up the newspaper El País, Jiménez and his fellow
workers read a Page One story that said that SINTEL, a subsidiary of
the state-owned Telefónica de España (Telephony of
Spain), had been sold to MASTEC International. It was "a sale
done with premeditation, deceit and malice," Jiménez
says.
"In
the sales contract, Telefónica guaranteed a value of 451
million euros, plus 18 million euros in capital expansion, plus 9
million euros in real estate, plus 3 million euros in fiscal credit.
The value they set for SINTEL was 29 million euros, payable in three
years, 1996 to 1998. MASTEC paid only 7 million euros. Draw your own
conclusions," Jiménez tells me.
Worse
yet, the contract "has no clause that guarantees employment. On
the contrary, it introduces a Dismissal Order for 1,411 workers — 70
percent of the payroll," he adds.
To
Jiménez and thousands of his colleagues, the sale of SINTEL
could not be justified on economic or operational grounds, because
"there was no need [to sell.] Telefónica used SINTEL as
an instrument to regulate prices in work contracts and as a spearhead
in international adventures." The company built the
communications network in Tripoli, Libya, and several Latin American
countries during the first half of the 1990s, when neoliberalism
flourished in the region.
Later
on, something unexpected occurred. SINTEL was drained dry "through
societies established in fiscal havens by figureheads. All of that
was protected, known and tolerated by the higher-ups at Telefónica"
at that time, Jiménez tells me. The capital drain "left
us jobless and unable to collect 11 months’ worth of wages. Even
today, seven years later, we have not been able to collect the
indemnification we were entitled to if the company went into
bankruptcy. We haven’t collected our pension, either, and they still
owe us for that."
The
economic bomb, from Miami to Madrid. Its manufacturers.
Telefónica
de España was the state-owned communications company, and
MASTEC was the communications company owned by the late anti-Castro
leader Jorge Mas Canosa. In 1995, Mas established a strong personal
relationship with José María Aznar, at the time the
Popular Party candidate to the Prime Minister’s office. Aznar
traveled to Miami. Mas, chairman of the Cuban American National
Foundation (created under the Reagan administration for its
operations against Cuba), lent Aznar his private jet to visit other
Latin American countries. They made a deal and, according to some
Spanish media, Mas Canosa provided financial support to Aznar’s
political campaign, enabling him to win the post of Spanish Prime
Minister in 1996.
Aznar
instituted a policy of privatization of public enterprises, and in
the international arena was actively involved in a campaign of
harassment against the Cuban government, same as Mas Canosa. There
was political-ideological identification. Anything else?
According
to Jiménez, some of the privatized companies "landed in
the hands of powerful economic groups, where [Aznar] installed his
friends as chairmen. Others, like SINTEL, he delivered directly to
people around him. If to this we add the good relations with the CANF
and his support and influence in the United States in the blockading
of the Cuban regime, well, there’s nothing more to say."
In
Jiménez’s opinion, Aznar’s rise to power meant "for
Jorge Mas Canosa a very good political springboard to the European
foreign ministries, in his policy of harassment and overthrow of
Fidel Castro."
Jiménez,
who at present is the spokesman for the SINTEL jobless, met Mas
Canosa. He tells me that "we met him at the Miguel Angel Hotel
in Madrid and he told us that he had been at the Bay of Pigs. We told
him we were not in the mood for fairy tales."
How
SINTEL was drained dry
After
years of legal efforts by the syndicate formed by the jobless, the
case went to the Anticorruption Committee in Madrid, where Judge
Santiago Pedraz indicted 24 Spanish citizens and some foreign
citizens. Let us see who they were.
The
prosecutors’ arguments were well summarized by the newspaper El País
(Jan. 29, 2007) from which I quote:
1.
On April 30, 1996, Telefónica sells SINTEL to MASTEC Inc.,
which used for the purpose its subsidiary MASTEC International Inc.
2.
On Dec. 30, 1998, a debt-acknowledgment contract is signed, a
commitment for payment and consolidation, where the parties are
Telefónica, MASTEC International and SINTEL, which becomes the
co-guarantor of the debt incurred by MASTEC International as a result
of its acquisition of SINTEL.
3.
On Dec. 30, 1998, another contract is signed, providing for the
handover of 87 percent of the shares of MASTEC International to five
societies, four of them located in the British Virgin Islands.
4.
On Dec. 4, 1999, SINTEL’s subsidiaries in Argentina, Peru, Venezuela,
Chile, Brazil and Mexico are transferred to SINTEL International
Corporation, in the Virgin Islands.
The
Anticorruption Committee understands that the four events listed
above were "the most relevant" to SINTEL’s insolvency. And
this would involve the people mentioned in that list, because "they
would have consciously provoked such a result; besides, they were in
a position of responsibility that allowed them to know the relevance
or transcendence their behavior would have in SINTEL’s patrimony and
therefore in [the patrimony] of the various creditors, specifically
the workers."
The
reader should note that SINTEL, the company purchased by MASTEC
International, became co-guarantor of the debt of MASTEC, a debt
MASTEC never paid. But thousands of workers were left jobless.
Early
this year, the anticorruption panel decided to keep six of the 24
indictees under a judicial process. Below, an excerpt from the
panel’s findings.
This
process, which is still in effect, left 1,400 people jobless and,
according to Jiménez, "23 of them have died, eight of
them from suicide. Dozens of workers have gone to medical court and
have been excused from returning to work because of psychiatric
trauma. More than 100 young people, the children of workers, had to
receive psychological care in school, and physical problems derived
from emotional tension still persist. One of the more dramatic cases
was the son of a worker who, looking at the prolonged economic needs
of his father and considering the reduced condition of himself and
his brother, committed suicide by leaping out of a window. His father
could do nothing to stop him."
Is
it an exaggeration to say that it was a time bomb? The anti-Castro
industry, an economic-political marriage, had "anti-Castro"
results. Cinco Días, a Spanish newspaper dealing with economic
issues, published the following news on May 31, 1996: "MASTEC is
reassessed at 58 billion pesetas (349 million euros) after the
purchase of SINTEL. Mas Canosa’s capital gains exceed 30 billion
pesetas (180 million euros) in less than two months."
On
Aug. 20, 1996, the same newspaper reported: "More business by
Mas Canosa Telefónica — The promoter of the Helms-Burton Act
has sold to the Spanish company a portion of its cable business in
Argentina." And on April 18, 1997, the paper reported:
"Telefónica again sells assets to MASTEC."
At
least two questions are inevitable: Is this the model of policy to
institute in the alleged post-Castro era? Business and power, and
power for more business?
The
other question, not at all naive: Why are the Miami media silent when
it comes to the open and existing judicial process against the Mas
Santos brothers? Will "business and power plus silence" be
the full model for a "free Cuba"?
Manuel
Alberto Ramy is Havana bureau chief for Radio Progreso Alternativa
and editor of Progreso Semanal, the English language version of
Progreso Weekly.
