The Cuban government has been fooling U.S. sanctions by concealing the true nature of the company that handles money sent by Cuban-Americans to their families on the island, a Miami Herald investigation shows.

The Trump administration imposed sanctions in 2020 on the Cuban military, banning it from handling the remittances from the U.S., and the Biden administration has kept the sanctions in place. The Cuban government pretended to create a new company independent of the military to handle the millions of dollars sent yearly to the island through Western Union and Miami-based money-transfer agencies. But in reality, secret documents reviewed by the Herald show the new company has been controlled by the Cuban military all along.