It is in reality about laundering the billions hidden in tax havens of Castro-communism: it is Cuba’s transition toward Putinism
14ymedio, Julio M. Shiling, Miami, March 23, 2026 – On March 16, 2026, the deputy prime minister and minister of Foreign Trade and Investment of communist Cuba, Óscar Pérez-Oliva Fraga, announced a radical change. Cubans living abroad, regardless of their residency status, can now invest, own, and partner in private businesses on the Island, including large infrastructure projects. The Castro regime presented it as an opening towar the exile and the diaspora. In reality, this decree is the opening act of a carefully orchestrated transfer-of-wealth heist, designed to launder the billions hidden in offshore tax havens of Castro-communism and return them to the Island under the pretext of “legal” private investment. It is Cuba’s transition toward Putinism.
The parallels with post-Soviet Russia are unmistakable. After the collapse of the USSR, the nomenklatura — top Communist Party officials, their families, and the security apparatus — devised a fraudulent “privatization” plan. State assets were auctioned off at bargain prices to insiders who had already moved wealth abroad through shell companies. The result was not capitalism, but kleptocracy: a new oligarchic class emerging directly from the old regime. Cuba is now replicating that model. Members of the regime who have deposited fortunes in offshore vehicles will soon “invest” those same funds in their own country, acquiring legal ownership of businesses while ordinary Cubans remain trapped in poverty. The very financial architecture of the dictatorship makes this plan possible.
Members of the regime who have deposited fortunes in “offshore”vehicles will soon “invest” those same funds in their own country, acquiring legal ownership of businesses while ordinary Cubans remain trapped in poverty
Let us consider the regime’s proven offshore network. Havana International Bank (Havin Bank Ltd.), headquartered in Canary Wharf, London, at 189 Marsh Wall, has long functioned as the regime’s main money laundering vehicle. This Castro-Communist front company is 100% state-owned and linked to the Central Bank of Cuba. It was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) in 2020 precisely for channeling funds to the dictatorial government in Havana. Other entities —ACMEX Management Company in the opaque tax haven of Liechtenstein, Mid-Atlantic structures registered in Luxembourg, and Caroil Transport Marine Ltd. in Cyprus— form an interconnected network of shipping companies and holding firms used to move assets discreetly.
These are not neutral companies. They are instruments of the State. The new law provides the perfect legal excuse: a relative or trusted representative of a high-ranking official, now reclassified as a “Cuban resident abroad,” can channel those offshore millions into Cuban businesses, converting the regime’s illicit capital into “private” property.
There are three possible interpretations of the regime’s sudden generosity. First, it could be the classic Castro “bait-and-switch” strategy. Havana has repeatedly offered limited openings, only to reverse course once capital has flowed in and its political usefulness has been exhausted. History suggests this pattern remains likely. Second, the regime may genuinely hope to imitate China’s model: leveraging exile and diaspora capital to drive growth while maintaining political control. This scenario is unlikely for two reasons. The Cuban exile community has consistently refused to invest while the dictatorship remains in place, citing the risk of future confiscation and moral opposition to supporting repression.
More decisively, any significant investment by Cuban Americans or other U.S. persons would still require specific authorization from the OFAC of the U.S. Treasury Department, under the long-standing U.S. embargo against Cuba. The embargo, enforced through the OFAC, generally prohibits direct investment in Cuban businesses by U.S. persons, with very limited exceptions that do not extend to broad commercial participation. Washington is not willing to issue the licenses necessary for large-scale flows that would rescue the regime.
Washington is not willing to issue the licenses necessary for large-scale flows that would rescue the regime
That leaves the third and most plausible explanation: the Russian-style model is now underway. The decree is not economic liberalization; it is legal cover for the mass repatriation and legitimization of hidden communist assets. The regime, aligned individuals, high-ranking officials, their families, and the structural apparatus will obtain “investor” status under the new migratory category. Their foreign holdings will suddenly appear as legitimate diaspora capital, buying stakes in hotels, agricultural enterprises, and micro, small, and medium-sized businesses. The plunder becomes “legal.” The dictatorship shifts from overt state socialism to a Putinist hybrid: nominal private ownership controlled by the same clique that has ruled for sixty-seven years.
The implications are stark. This is not an invitation to genuine entrepreneurs, but a structured operation to convert looted national wealth into protected private fortunes. Once “invested,” these assets will be shielded from future sanctions and international scrutiny under the cover of law. In effect, the looters are not only evading justice but are also legally entrenching their theft for decades to come.
Nominal private ownership controlled by the same clique that has ruled for sixty-seven years
The United States, in shaping its foreign policy in line with the November 2025 National Security Strategy statement, must draw a clear and uncompromising line. No investment law or regulation enacted by the Castro-communist regime deserves even minimal recognition. For the future democratic government of a free Cuba, every transaction, partnership, share transfer, or property claim enabled by this March 2026 decree must be declared null and void from the outset, as it is legally tainted, morally repugnant, and strategically unacceptable. This is not an economic opening. It is the regime’s final piñata party for the nomenklatura, in which the billions hidden and looted from the Cuban people over decades are finally broken open and redistributed among the same ruling clique and its proxies under the thin disguise of “diaspora investment.”
Treating any of these measures as legitimate is handing thieves the keys to their own getaway car and blessing the robbery in real time. The Cuban people (and U.S. businesses and individuals) have already been victims of the mass asset theft carried out in 1959. They should not be forced to watch a second theft unfold without resistance. Democratic governments, international financial institutions, and the exile community itself have a clear duty: reject the plan outright, invalidate every dollar that flows through it, and deny the Castro dynasty the Putin-style rebranding it so desperately seeks. Anything less is complicity in the most cynical heist in history.
Editor’s Note: This text was originally published on the Patria de Martí website.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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