“He’s been ‘planted’ hard [refused to cooperate with prison authorities] and in solitary confinement,” says a relative of Frank Cuspinera.
14ymedio, Havana, June 6, 2025 — As announced, Frank Cuspinera, owner of Diplomarket, the “Cuban Costco”, imprisoned in the Combinado del Este, has been on a hunger and thirst strike since June 1. “He’s standing firm” tells 14ymedio a relative of the Cuban-American businessman who calls himself Luis for fear of reprisals.
Cuspinera has been taken to an isolation cell. “He cannot receive visitors or make calls,” says Luis. He reports that the authorities called the businessman’s wife, Camila Castro, who is out of jail but also being investigated for the same crimes Cuspinera is accused of – tax evasion, currency trafficking and money laundering – to tell her that they are concerned about her husband’s health.
Castro went to jail this Thursday, called by the authorities to perform “family dynamics,” says Luis. This is what they call it, “when the relatives of a ’plantado’ are brought in to convince him to stop the strike”. He goes on: “They wanted to bring in the family dynamic without even knowing Frank’s emotional profile, without even having found out the reasons why he’s carrying out the strike. Obviously they were only complying with an institutional protocol, so it will be recorded in some file that they did what they had to do and called the family.”
His wife went to the jail this Thursday, called by the authorities to perform “family dynamics”
For the family, there is no real worry or professional psychological work behind it, so neither Cuspinera’s mother nor his wife accepted the “dynamics.” All of them fear, says Luis, that the entrepreneur will end up in the hospital “faster than we think” if he continues not to ingest liquids – the human body survives only a few days without water.
Cuspinera announced his hunger strike in a handwritten letter signed on May 21 and sent from the Combinado del Este, almost a year after his arrest with no news of his whereabouts. In it, he made “an appeal to the international community, to international and human rights bodies,” as well as to the United States Department of State, “to intervene with the Cuban institutions for the constant violations of my rights and the denial of legal guarantees for my defense by the Cuban state institutions and their representatives.”
The businessman complained that he was manipulated by State Security and the Cuban judicial apparatus, “which are viciously activated against me” and which managed, with “multiple falsehoods”, to accuse him “without the right of defense”.
Several Diplomarket workers are being investigated and ’regulated’
All this was confirmed to 14ymedio by Luis, who gave details about the case, since the Diplomarket was closed and its owners arrested on June 20, 2024. After receiving the visit of officials from the National Tax Administration Office (ONAT) who “had a complaint for tax evasion, without having done a prior audit”, the Technical Directorate of Investigations (DTI) appeared in the supermarket. The entrepreneurs were arrested and their business licenses taken away “immediately” from both Cuspinera SURL, the firm under which the supermarket operated, and Kmila-mart, his wife’s company, leaving them “inoperable”.
A former collaborator of Cuspinera and Castro, who also requests anonymity, tells this newspaper that several Diplomarket workers now are “regulated“; that is, they are not allowed to leave the country. “There are several people who have tried to leave Cuba; no one informed them of anything, and when they got to the airport they were told that they couldn’t leave and lost their plane tickets,” says the source.
“When you go to see the instructor, Major Yiset Oliva Betancourt, she tells you that you cannot leave the country because all the workers in that company are under investigation.” The situation, the man denounces, goes against the Constitution, which in article 52 decrees freedom of movement.
One month before the operation against Diplomarket, the company’s accountant left the country without notice
A third source related to Cuspinera, whom we will call Olga, says that one month before the operation against Diplomarket, the founder of the company’s accounting department and the wife of the general manager of Kmila-mart, “left the country without meeting the review period for their work and without prior notice”. According to Olga, the managers of the company later discovered that “there were bad procedures in their work,” and they undertook an “internal audit.”
At the time of arrest, Olga says, “there were already indications of capital misappropriation and defaults,” but the investigation could not be concluded due to the closing of commercial operations. “Some time after her husband left the country, it became known that they are both in the United States,” says the woman, who cannot confirm “how much could have been diverted.”
The couple’s behavior in any case, is “highly suspect,” and “the authorities have not taken this into account, making Frank solely responsible.”
Luis, who categorically denied that Cuspinera was associated in any way with the regime, ventured before 14ymedio a few days ago that what happened may have to do with the success achieved by the Cuban-American, and that, once arrested, the State Security “pulled” all the information about the operation of Diplomarket to implement the “model” in the current dollar stores, inaugurated on the last day of December with the Supermarket 3rd and 70th.
“Here everyone knows that all the MSMEs do currency trafficking, because when they enacted the laws for private companies it was done knowing that there would never be availability in the bank to obtain the currency legally. It is known that the largest percentage of everything sold in Cuba are imported products obtained with foreign exchange transactions, because nothing is produced here, so you have to import to produce later,” said the source. “They let you run knowing that they have the power to invoke this crime when they don’t want to let you run anymore, and they choose MSMEs that got out of their hands to eliminate them.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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