Police Video Reveals Corruption and Theft at Cuban Meat Processing Plant

By Cafefuerte

HAVANA TIMES — A surveillance video recorded by Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior (MININT), showing many incidents of corruption and criminal activity involving company employees and management, has been divulged over different social media.

The images, included in a nearly 5-minute Power Point presentation, were recorded by MININT at the SOLCAR meat processing plant in Guantanamo at an unspecified date. They show plant employees throwing numerous sacks of meat over one of the walls of the facility, to an individual standing outside the plant.

“The total lack of revolutionary vigilance is evident. We have workers witnessing the theft who do nothing to condemn or report the crime,” the image caption reads.

These criminal activities involved security guards employed by Cuba’s Empresa de Seguridad y Proteccion (SEPRO), a company that offers security services for State entities. In the captions that appear in the surveillance video, the company is erroneously identified as “SIPROT.”

According to police reports, company vehicles were being utilized to transport stolen products. The video shows a metallic container where the stolen meat was hidden, as well as the use of State vehicles for the “theft of 29 boxes of MDM ground meat, destined to illegal sales.”

Perpetrators Arrested

The surveillance video also shows the arrest of those implicated in the thefts and the places, outside company premises, where the sacks of stolen meat were received (one of which is equipped with a pipe for extracting the products).

Independent journalist Roberto Jesus Quiñones reports that six employees detained on July 24 were released five days later, without bail. The report is dated August 5, but it is not clear whether these detentions are related to the criminal activities shown on the MININT video.

The video closes with a fragment of the address pronounced by President Raul Castro before the Cuban parliament this past July. In his address, Castro criticizes corruption and the “lack of rigor, the lack of professionalism at work,” calling on State employees to “lose all fear of getting into trouble and to fulfill their duties.”

Reports dealing with cases of corruption and misdemeanors – describing police raids at State markets and the trials of the alleged culprits – have been on the rise in Cuba’s press in recent weeks.