The British newspaper says executives from the U.S. president’s companies have met with Raúl Castro’s grandson.
14ymedio, Madrid, September 18, 2026 – Several executives from the Trump Organization have traveled to the Island several times in recent months, where they have held meetings with Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, alias El Cangrejo, grandson of Raúl Castro, to “explore opportunities” following the departure of Spanish hotel companies Meliá and Iberostar due to the threat of U.S. sanctions.
The Guardian says so in a report published this Thursday, in which it questions the activities of the U.S. president’s circle. The British newspaper’s headline says they are seeking “control of Cuba’s assets if the regime falls,” while Washington continues to impose sanctions on people and entities within the Cuban Government that affect any foreign company with any type of connection, the most recent sanctions having been announced this Thursday.
“If I had done during the Biden Administration what Trump’s friends have done now, I would have ended up in prison,” a source with decades of experience in U.S. policy toward the Island, who requested anonymity, told The Guardian. And indeed, while giants such as the Spanish hotel chains, Canada’s Sherritt, shipping companies, Visa, Mastercard and several others have been forced to abandon their businesses on the Island due to the threat of being sanctioned under Trump’s executive order of May 1, others are trying to profit.
“If I had done during the Biden Administration what Trump’s friends have done now, I would have ended up in prison”
Specifically, The Guardian says, people close to the U.S. Administration. “A growing group of influential people in Washington and Florida – from Trump-affiliated billionaires and Rubio-linked lobbies to Cuban exiles – are vying to control key assets of the communist-ruled island nation,” says the newspaper, which also asserts that “they charge hefty sums to help their clients navigate the ever-expanding sanctions network and position themselves to take advantage of lucrative business opportunities should the regime collapse.”
One of them is Franklin Graham, chief executive of the evangelical aid organization Samaritan’s Purse, who, according to The Guardian’s sources, “recently obtained a $40 million federal contract to distribute humanitarian aid in Cuba, despite lacking the capacity to effectively carry out such a contract on the Island.” A spokesperson for the NGO did not deny the information to the British newspaper, although the spokesperson clarified: “Details about aid for Cuba are still being worked out and have not been finalized.”
The Guardian points to several similar cases that are already known, such as the dispute between Ray Washburne, a former Trump adviser, and Albert Huddleston, another magnate with ties to the White House, over entering Sherritt International after it suspended its operations at the Moa mines, or the case of Antilles Gold. After being blacklisted for its work in Cuba, the Australian firm received the Trump Administration’s approval to negotiate the transfer of its stake in the Nueva Sabana deposits in Ciego de Ávila and La Demajagua, on the Isle of Youth, to Global Emerging Markets, a multibillion-dollar investment fund based in New York.
Likewise, the newspaper recalls the oil blockade since the intervention in Venezuela in January, while fuel exports authorized by the Treasury Department from Florida and Texas to the Island “have surged, exceeding $160 million so far this year.”
Those exports are conditioned on their being received by private mipymes, but, as 14ymedio has documented, the State sector is fully involved in the business.
Another example is found among Florida shipping companies, such as Crowley, which is a donor to the campaigns of Cuban-American Republican congressmen Mario Díaz-Balart and María Elvira Salazar, and which “appear to benefit from the new sanctions that have affected foreign shipping companies and forced trade destined for Cuba to be redirected through Florida.”
“Ironically, some of those who have most vehemently demanded tougher sanctions are also profiting economically”
The privileges include communications companies, such as Digital News Association Inc., which received a $250,000 contract from the U.S. Government’s Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) – initially canceled and demonized by Donald Trump after taking office – to carry out “investigative journalism, studies and media production,” and whose main website has done nothing but publish interviews that repeat the thesis included in the State Department report Cuba, Capital of 21st-Century Socialism.
“Ironically, some of those who have most vehemently demanded tougher sanctions are also profiting economically,” The Guardian also states, mentioning the lobbying firm Continental Strategy, which has close ties to Trump and Rubio and agreed to represent the Spanish company Vima – a partner of Gaesa – although it canceled the contract five weeks after signing it and after receiving nearly $40,000.
“It has been interesting to watch how quickly some hard-line ideologues become pragmatic when money is involved,” another source told the British newspaper. The reason, Erik Cartelle, a consultant who works to connect prominent exiles with Rubio’s team, told the The Guardian, “is regime change.” And he said: “I have clients who want to do a lot of business in Cuba, and the Administration is betting that Cuban Americans will travel to the Island and invest.”
What The Guardian does not say is that the Havana regime itself has repeatedly called on the Cuban diaspora to invest in the Island.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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