Bouygues, the Favorite Construction Co. of Cuba’s Military

Who is Bouygues, the French conglomerate that built Cuba’s Five-Star Hotels? Read on and you will find out.

By Miguel Alejandro Hayes Martinez (El Toque)

HAVANA TIMES – For more than 20 years, Cuban economic policy has concentrated its investments in the hotel industry. Additionally, external financing represents only a third of the investments, while the military conglomerate GAESA covers the rest.

Hotel investments translate into payments to companies responsible for building the structures. For this reason, the big winners of Cuban investment policy are the construction companies with which GAESA contracts. Notably, the top-rated hotels have been built by a single company. That company is Bouygues.

The Conglomerate

Bouygues S.A. is an industrial group based in France, founded in 1952 by Francis Bouygues, the leading construction entrepreneur in France, according to the newspaper El Pais.

According to Forbes, in 2022, Bouygues generated over $44 billion in revenue, a figure much higher than Toyota’s, illustrating the size of the French company. Bouygues operates in around 140 countries and owns companies in telecommunications, media, transportation, and construction. Some of the companies are:

• Bouygues Telecom: According to its website, it is a “comprehensive electronic communications operator.” It ranks third in the mobile phone market in France, with 23.2 million customers, 34.5 million cable Internet installations, and the ability to offer 4G to 99% of the French population. It is also a local leader in implementing the 5G network.
• TF1: As the “leader in French free-to-air television,” TF1 generated €2.297 billion in revenue in 2023 and had 2,888 employees in 13 countries, according to its official website. Currently, it owns eight French television channels.
• Equans: A cutting-edge company in the energy and services sector, generating nearly €18.8 billion and executing more than 800,000 projects annually. It has over 90 highly qualified employees and a strong presence in Europe, North America, Asia, and Oceania, according to its official site.
• Colas: A subsidiary dedicated to building transportation routes, employing over 65,000 people with a presence in 50 countries across five continents. It operates more than 1,000 operational units and 3,000 production centers. It aspires to lead the sector. In 2023, according to its website, it generated €16 billion in revenue.
• Bouygues Immobilier: A company dedicated to “designing living spaces that consider all users and all scales: the project, the neighborhood, and the city.” It has 1,639 employees in France, Poland, Belgium, and Spain, 31 agencies, and four subsidiaries, according to its official site.
• Bouygues Construction: Employs over 32,000 workers in around 60 countries and generated €9.8 billion in revenue in 2023. According to Construcción Latinoamericana, a specialized sector portal, it is the seventh-largest company by sales volume. Notable projects include the Miami Port Tunnel, Singapore’s Sports Hub, the Stade de France, and the Channel Tunnel.

Investigations for Corruption

Between 1989 and 1996, Bouygues formed a cartel with the French companies Suez-Lyonnaise and Vivendi. A cartel is an association between entrepreneurs to eliminate their competitors, which is an illegal economic practice in many countries. They secured opaque contracts for building schools in Paris, according to the organization Freedom for Sale. Through these contracts, the cartel engaged in overpricing and limiting competition, earning an extra $500 million. The press exposed these actions, and after an investigation, Bouygues was convicted of embezzling public funds.

On November 30, 1995, three Bouygues executives were accused of corruption. A few weeks later, the company’s director, Martin Bouygues, was questioned by Lyon police agents, according to reports from the French newspaper Les Echos, which specializes in economic matters. The case involved illegal deposits and fraud in a Swiss bank. Martin Bouygues admitted to paying into a secret fund to conceal his financing of the Lyon mayor.

In 1996, the conglomerate was investigated again for fraud and bribery, this time for forming another cartel to secure contracts for projects such as the TGV high-speed train and the Normandy Bridge.

The following year, it was implicated in an investigation for false billing and misuse of corporate assets that harmed around 40 Parisian companies, as documented by the English-language encyclopedia Encyclopedia.com. Bouygues was fined €19 million.

Bouygues was also involved in scandals outside Europe. Prosecutor Germán Juárez, from the Lava Jato Special Team, presented evidence found in the “Construction Club” investigation, which involved 18 companies that had bribed public officials to secure contracts, according to the Peruvian newspaper Gestión. The companies involved paid through cash, fictitious contracts, and deposits in accounts. Among the accused entities was Conalvia, a subsidiary of Colas, which belongs to Bouygues.

Presence in Cuba

Bouygues Construction has had an extensive presence in Cuba since 1999, with 22 projects in the Caribbean country as of 2017, according to the consortium. To date, the company has built over 30,000 rooms on the island, representing, according to French figures, half of the country’s hotels and all of the Five-Star hotels. The controversial K23 hotel is also being built by the French multinational, as revealed by a thesis from the Higher Institute of Design in Havana.

Since 2000, the official newspaper Trabajadores reports that Bouygues has operated in Cuba under the name Arcos-BBI (Bouygues Bâtiment International). It is an International Economic Association (AEI) —a type of joint venture but usually without legal status— between the French conglomerate and the Cuban Ministry of Construction, and headquartered in Varadero in 2017. That year, a class project from the Central University Marta Abreu of Las Villas revealed that Bouygues had formed another AEI called (AEI UCM-BBI) in conjunction with the Military Construction Unit (UCM), belonging to the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR).

The investor in the hotel projects carried out by Arcos-BBI and UCM-BBI is Almest S.A., a real estate company belonging to the GAESA military consortium, according to an investigation by El Toque in 2019.

Bouygues is also present in other sectors of the Cuban economy. In 2016, the Cuban Aviation Corporation S.A. awarded Bouygues Batiment International the management of Jose Marti International Airport in Havana, as reported by the official newspaper Escambray.

During the 2016 Havana International Fair, the Union of Railways of Cuba signed a contract with the French National Railway Company (SNFC) for Colas, a Bouygues subsidiary, to repair part of the Cuban railway network, reported Martí Noticias.

In 2016, the official website of the Mariel Special Development Zone stated that a Bouygues subsidiary would establish itself within its space. Operations were expected to begin in 2018, according to the official newspaper Granma.

Miami and the Embargo

Bouygues operates close to the Cuban exile community. It has offices in Miami, where it conducts operations through Americaribe LLC. The company has been a contractor for the French giant in the United States since 2002, according to its official website.

It was involved in the Brickell City Center, inaugurated in November 2016; The Flamingo Residence, completed in 2021; and The Art condominium in Miami Beach, completed in 2019.

When the Brickell City Center project was completed, the executive manager of the French company in Miami was Mr. Víctor Dos Santos, who led the branch from August to December 2019, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Dos Santos, who has worked for BBI for 35 years, was the director of Arcos-BBI between 2017 and 2018 in Cuba and then held another management position in Miami between 2018 and 2020.

Legally, there are no records of lawsuits against BBI for doing business with the Cuban regime’s military and the United States. According to the CubaTrade portal, it has also not been affected by the activation of Title III of the Helms-Burton Act after March 2, 2019, although 40% of the lawsuits under this title against companies of the European Union have been against other French companies.

First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.

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