Two state entities linked to nickel and cobalt and two others associated with Cupet are also blacklisted.
14ymedio, Madrid, September 3, 2026 – The U.S. State Department issued new sanctions against the Cuban regime this Thursday, pursuant to the order issued by President Donald Trump last May. From now on, Banco Exterior de Cuba and another grandson of Raúl Castro, Fidel Ernesto Castro Calis, are also on the blacklist. His brother Raúl Alejandro Castro Calis and their father, Alejandro Castro Espín, were already sanctioned in June.
This grandson of Raúl Castro, the United States indicates, is being designated precisely “for being an adult family member of Alejandro Castro Espín.”
In addition, the United States is also sanctioning several state-owned companies, two related to the nickel and cobalt mining business — Empresa de Servicios Comandante René Ramos Latour (Nicarotec) and Empresa Importadora y Abastecedora del Níquel (Cexni) — and two associated with Unión Cuba Petróleo (Cupet), which has also been on the blacklist for months: Empresa Importadora de Abastecimiento para el Petróleo (Abapet) and Comercial Cupet S.A.
These entities, it continues, “exploit Cuba’s natural resources or energy reserves for the benefit of the regime”
“I am designating five entities and one individual whose activities support the regime’s financial services, metals, mining, and energy sectors, and who are part of networks that advance the regime’s threats to U.S. national security,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio says in the official statement. These entities, he continues, “exploit Cuba’s natural resources or energy reserves for the benefit of the regime.”
As with the other sanctions imposed since May under Executive Order 14404 of May 1, the list entails not only the blocking of the sanctioned parties’ assets in U.S. territory or in the possession or control of U.S. persons, but also prohibits any transactions with these entities by U.S. persons or by people who reside in or travel through the United States. The exception remains that they have a license from the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
“The Cuban communist regime continues to pose a profound and multifaceted threat to the national security of the United States and the stability of our hemisphere,” Rubio argues in the statement, using the same justification as on previous occasions. “While the Cuban people suffer, the Castro family and their cronies in Cuba’s repressive Ministry of the Interior perpetuate their absolute control over the island’s economy, hoarding resources for the benefit of a small group of regime elites.”
The new sanctions, he concludes, “reflect President Trump’s unwavering vision of a free Cuba, one in which the regime’s illicit financial networks, repressive apparatuses, and entrenched power structures from the Castro era are dismantled, and in which the Cuban people, not their oppressors, inherit the nation’s future.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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