Cuba Tries UK Co. Directors for Corruption
HAVANA TIMES — A Cuban court today opened a trial against two directors of a UK company detained since 2011 on charges of corruption on the island, a week after holding a similar process against a Canadian citizen.
A court in Havana’s Diez de Octubre municipality opened a trial Thursday morning against business executives Amado Fakhre and Stephen Purvis, of the British Coral Capital Group.
Both are accused of corruption and economic crimes. Fakhre and Purvis were arrested in October 2011, in an operation which closed the Coral Capital offices in Havana. The British company had been operating for many years especially in the tourist sector of the island.
Officials and the government controlled media have provided no information. Alongside Fakhre, executive director of Coral Capital, and Purvis, chief operating officer of the company, standing trial today are six Cuban nationals.
Last Thursday another closed-door trial was held against Sarkis Yacoubian, a Canadian businessman and director of Tri-Star Caribbean, also on corruption charges.
It is expected that the court ruling in all these cases with be forthcoming within a few weeks.
The government of Raul Castro has made fighting corruption one of its main efforts. Several Cuban officials have been convicted of such crimes in recent years.
Simple: one that’s free from people like you meddling into its affairs.
OK, these are your rules and therefore your conclusions. Please answer this question: What future do you wish for Cuba?
While you still support the aggressive actions of the US against Cuba you ARE ‘anti-Cuba’. You are the one blaming the victim here. There’s no denial of that.
You are assuming surreal things, like there’s no honest people in Cuba. That makes you a xenophobic aberration of a human being.
The “corruption” virus was already well embedded in the Cuban system long before the came. Cuba is a corrupt system where lots of things can only be obtained with a bribe. Corruption pervades Cuban society from the common people to the top.
Some examples:
http://cubacorrupcion.impela.net/
Corruption in Cuba is part and parcel of the system. It is – as Octavio Paz one put it about corruption – the oil and glue.
The oil that keeps the society going and the glue that keeps the regime together. Lots of things in Cuba need corruption to work. If you buy building materials on the black market you also buy a proof of purchase from an official source so your materials won’t be impounded by the inspectors. Doctors get bribes for (preferential) treatment. Illegal transfers of property can be “fixed” with a bribe.
More on the subject:
http://cubacorrupcion.impela.net/
I do not wish you ill. However, you are over-reaching to accuse me of being anti-Cuban. Corruption in Cuba is an integral part of doing business at all levels. If you buy a bottle of shampoo, you can assume that someone has pilfered a few capfuls from every bottle in the warehouse or storeroom to refill 50 empty bottles for resale in the black market. If you buy a mojito in a state bar, you can assume that the bartender made your drink from a bottle of rum that he purchased, therefore justifying that he skim 3 cuc from the 4 cuc cost of the mojito. When you go to the butcher, you should know that he uses one scale for the inspector and another the customer. And so on. It is embedded in the culture Luis. Everyone knows it and everyone does it. I do not hate the Cuban people for this. That would be blaming the victim. I hate what the Castros have done to the Cuban people. See the difference?
I cannot BELIEVE you who have apparently NO other information on this case is blaming ‘the Castros’ AGAIN for the actions of BRITISH people accused of corruption and being investigated for more than 2 years? Is that because they came to Cuba and they got the ‘corruption virus’ and then turned from ‘honest foreign business’ to evil-doers?
You make me sick – you are not ‘anti-Castro’, you are ‘anti-Cuban’ indeed to make such a xenophobic statement as this ‘culturally-imbedded’ crap.
Oh I forgot it was you, ‘Moses’. from you I CAN believe to say such nonsense propaganda.
Corruption in Cuba is culturally-imbedded. This “hit-and-miss” approach to curtail corruption tthat we are witnessing will likely do little than send a chilling-effect to those honest foreign business interests who otherwise would likely be considering investing in Cuba. What is necessary is a ‘whole-house’ cleaning from the top down. Obviously, this is not going to happen. The Castro family business is as busy as ever lining their pockets in preparation for the fall of the regime.
The reports in the Canadian papers are that Sarkis Yacoubian sang like a bird during the “investigation” phase of his case. He told the police all about the corrupt practices foreign businesses are obliged to engage in with Cuban government officials if they want to get contracts in Cuba.
…”After his arrest, Yacoubian confessed to bribery and implicated other foreign firms. Within months, dozens of Cuban officials and state purchasers were behind bars.
“I tried to explain to them (investigators) systematically how things could be done,” Yacoubian told the Toronto Star last week in his only interview from jail. “I gave them drawings, designs. I gave them names, people, how they do it, why, when, where, what.”…
http://www.torontosun.com/2013/05/23/canadian-businessman-on-trial-for-corruption-in-cuba
One must wonder what his former business partners, the Cuban officials now arrested, might feel about him should they ever meet up in prison?