Spain’s Foreign Ministry Paid Che Guevara’s Nephew to Bring Computers to Cuba

Guevara Lezica is one of the five children of Matilde Lezica and Roberto Guevara, who in the 70s joined the terrorist group, the People’s Revolutionary Army. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 22 October 2021 — A foundation of the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs paid 529,700 euros in Panama to a company linked to a nephew of Ernesto Che Guevara, as revealed this Friday by the newspaper El Español,  to “give away computer equipment” to the Government of Cuba. The money was covered with resources granted by the European Union (EU) which it uses to finance development projects and the fight against corruption, illegal immigration, terrorism and organized crime in Third World countries.

In January 2020, the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies (FIIAPP) summoned companies to participate in a competition for the award of seven contracts for a total amount of 694,000 euros. The winning companies would be in charge of transporting and then installing  on the Island the laptops, memory storage devices, tablets, various servers, printers, scanners, projectors, video cameras and their accessories.

Among the participating companies was Grupo Kapan Internacional, represented by Che Guevara’s nephew, Roberto Guevara Lezica, to whom the FIIAPP awarded six of the seven lots tendered under the framework of the Cuba-EU II Expert Exchange Program.

El Español reveals as a condition for the awarded companies that they “know the complexity of obtaining permits and licenses to import into Cuba” and, among other requirements, that they are “authorized by the government of the dictatorship led by Miguel Díaz-Canel.”

It turns out that the Kapan International Group  renewed its operating license with the Island in 2016 and is authorized to trade with the regime up to “nuclear reactors,” in addition to food, raw materials and foundry manufactures, according to information from the Official Gazette of Cuba published on November 11, 2019.

The award granted by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs resulted in an injection of capital for Kapan Internacional based in the Parque Urraca Building, on Avenida Balboa (Panama). Currently the company has a share capital of $50,000 and its resident agent is José Roberto Luttrell, who is linked to 2,357 different companies that appear in the Panama Papers.

This precedent did not stop the Spanish foundation from granting a new contract to the Panamanian society last September, now for 132,950 euros to provide computers to the Institute of Physical Planning of Cuba, in charge of managing urban planning.

Kapan Internacional has delivered “technological equipment,” according to the FIIAPP portal, which favored the development of software a??for managing the services of the Single Window of Foreign Investment. It also sent “an electric vehicle to the island for the mobility of official and technical personnel of the institutions.”

Meanwhile, Guevara Lezica is one of the five children of Matilde Lezica and Roberto Guevara, who in the 1970s joined the terrorist group, the People’s Revolutionary Army, which was the “armed wing” of the Revolutionary Party of the Workers of Argentina. In 1981 Che Guevara’s brother was arrested in Mexico for participating in the kidnapping of the niece of the presidential candidate of the conservative National Action Party, Pablo Emilio Madero.

At the time of the award that favored the company represented by Che Guevara’s nephew, the FIIAPP Foundation was chaired by Vice President Carmen Calvo and as part of this body, there were the ministers of Foreign Affairs, Arancha González Laya, and of Justice, Juan Carlos Campo.

Cuba and the EU relaunched their relations with the signing in 2016 of the historic Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement (ADPC). Just over a week ago, Spanish Members of the European Parliament from the Popular Party, Leopoldo López Gil, Ciudadanos José Ramón Bauzá and Vox Hermann Tertsch, urged the community bloc to suspend this agreement with the Island for the “systematic violation of obligations and commitments agreed.”

In Tertsch’s opinion, Cuban leaders have “enriched themselves” with EU funds, which have financed the “whims of a dictatorship.”

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