Former Cuban Deputy Prime Minister and former Economy Minister Alejandro Gil Fernández, who only two years ago was a trusted leader of President Miguel Díaz-Canel, was sentenced to life in prison for a dozen crimes, including espionage and “treason against the homeland.” The sentence against Gil, handed down Monday by Cuba’s Supreme People’s Court, culminates a political and judicial maneuver by the regime that began in February 2024, with his abrupt resignation from office. The court concludes that Gil “deceived the country’s leaders and the people he represented, thus generating damage to the economy” and emphasizes that “treason against the country is the most serious of crimes and whoever commits it is subject to the most severe sanctions,” reports Efe.
The former minister was responsible for promoting monetary reform, a key project for the government. Díaz-Canel gave him a “grateful hug” after his dismissal. However, over time, she began to distance herself from him. He assured that he had made “serious errors” and that for this reason he was the subject of an investigation for which, he announced, he would have “zero tolerance”.
On October 31, an official statement from the Office of the Attorney General of the Republic announced that after investigations carried out by the organs of the Ministry of the Interior, where “due process was guaranteed”, Gil Fernández was found responsible for the crimes of “espionage, acts detrimental to economic activity or procurement, embezzlement, corruption, falsification of public documents, tax evasion, influence peddling, money laundering, violation rules for the protection of confidential information. documents as well as the theft and damage to documents or other objects placed in official custody.
Even though the former minister assumed the most important responsibility for six years, between 2018 and 2024, in the management of the Cuban economic disaster, the truth is that the crisis is a structural problem that goes beyond his decisions. And both the dismissal and the first statements by Díaz-Canel, his change of position and then the announcement of the indictment of Gil Fernández show the tensions that exist within the government apparatus in Havana.
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