On the Trail of the MININT Papers / Juan Juan Almeida

Ministry of the Interior headquarters in Havana, Cuba

Juan Juan Almeida, 9 May 2016 — In connection with a top secret theft targeting the Interior Ministry of the Republic of Cuba (MININT), a high number of officials have been arrested, a colonel in charge of computer operations has committed suicide in his own office on the eighth floor of Building A at MININT headquarters, and a foreign businessman is being subjected to enormous pressure from the Cuban government.

The information had remained secret until March 31 when an article appeared here under the title “MINIT Confronts What Could Be Its Worst Challenge: Information Theft.” In it, I wrote that the Major General Carlos Fernandez Gondin had left his office accompanied by a doctor after a fit of rage, which led to a heart attack and his hospitalization.

At the time the obvious question was, “What could be so irritating as to reduce the blood flow of someone capable of not only leading a firing squad without the slightest remorse but of also justifying it?”

Now after much effort, some payouts and access to high-level sources, the enigma has begun to take shape. As I previously noted, it is almost impossible to believe that the theft of secret material was not the result of a cyber attack. It was a calculated, premeditated act, paid for by a Canadian businessman. Though he is not now in Cuba, he is being pressured by Cuban authorities to not release or sell the information to a foreign intelligence agency. Though he himself is not currently in the country, the businessman, whose name I do not know, is being cruelly coerced because, among other things, members of his family still live on the island and are not being allowed to leave.

According to one of source, “the information is so secret that, if it came to light, it would be extremely damaging to Cuba and its leaders. It is more serious than the Number One and Number Two Cases of 1989. Never in the entire history of MININT or the former DIER (Department of Army Investigations) has such valuable information been stolen.”

The reports are troubling. It is said that there are documents implicating European intellectuals, American academics and businesspeople, and even a former president of Panama. There is also talk of a list of names of Cubans who have been forcibly “disappeared,” of covert activities carried out overseas, of regional destabilization operations, of money laundering, of the sale of Venezuelan and Panamanian visas, of the government approving trafficking operations under the more attractive guise of humanitarian aid to separated families, and of significant investments by Cuban leaders in Nicaragua, Panama, Mexico and Venezuela. 

A lot can be discerned about the robbery but not very much about the names. Internal control, intelligence, counterintelligence, military counterintelligence and CIM (Defense and National Security Commission) officials are using disinformation to obscure the identity of the Canadian businessman, the number of disgruntled military men involved in the sale of information, and the names of the colonels and general who led the operation and who remain in custody.

See:

MININT Confronts What Could Be Its Worst Challenge: Information Theft / Juan Juan Almeida

The Weighty Legacy of ‘Furry’ / 14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar

Sadistic, Extravagant and Kleptomaniac: General Gondin / Juan Juan Almeida #Cuba