"Cuba cracking down on corruption" November 25, 2011|By Paul Haven, Associated Press
HAVANA - Green-clad security agents swoop down on an upscale business complex to shutter the offices of a Canadian car dealership. Top executives at Cuba’s famed cigar monopoly find themselves behind bars. A former government minister trades his seat in power for a jail cell and a 15-year term.
President Raul Castro is matching his free-market economic changes with a zealous battle against entrenched corruption on this Communist-run island, much of it involving Cuban officials at major state-run companies and ministries as well as the foreigners they do business with.
Cuba says the crusade is essential to save the socialist system. Others wonder at the timing of a crackdown that has sent a chill through the small foreign business community, just when the cash-strapped economy needs international financing to push the reforms along.
Cuba has battled corruption before, even executing a former revolutionary war hero on drug trafficking charges in 1989. But past arrests have been largely limited to Cubans. Analysts say the current crackdown seems different, with Canadian, French, Czech, Chilean, and English citizens jailed or sentenced for their alleged roles, and scores of small South American and European companies kicked out of the country.
The sale of Korean cars and car parts slowed this year as two top distributors, both Canadian, became ensnared. Meanwhile, such products as Chilean wine, juice, and tomato paste temporarily disappeared from supermarket shelves, replaced after a few months by other brands.
One thing is clear. The rules of doing business in Cuba have changed under Raul....
While the nonprofit Transparency International says Cuba ranks better than average worldwide in a measure of corruption and is third best in Latin America and the Caribbean, graft here can be more corrosive because the state controls nearly the entire economy....
“The fight against corruption is vitally important,’’ said Comptroller General Gladys Bejerano, a stern, poker-faced official who is spearheading the investigations. “It doesn’t produce fatalities and there are no bombs or blood … but it is the only thing that can bring down the revolution because it destroys our values and morality and it corrodes our institutions.’’
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"In major step, Cuba legalizes purchase, sale of real estate; New law applies only to citizens living on island" November 04, 2011|By Paul Haven, Associated Press
HAVANA - Cuba announced yesterday that it will allow real estate to be bought and sold for the first time since the early days of the revolution, the most important reform yet in a series of free-market changes under President Raul Castro....
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