Gaviota, a company that runs tourist hotels and is just one of many owned by the military, is sitting on about $4.3 billion in its bank accounts, the documents show.
That’s almost 13 times the $339 million the government said it needed to buy medications to supply Cuban pharmacies annually. The country’s healthcare system lacks 70% percent of the essential medications to treat most illnesses, Cuba’s prime minister said earlier this month.
In recent years, GAESA — short for Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A.— has expanded its control of the island’s most profitable businesses, including tourism, retail, telecommunications and money sent to Cubans by families abroad. GAESA has made the crisis worse by siphoning billions of dollars from the country’s foreign currency revenues to relentlessly build new hotels despite the deteriorating situation. And it keeps its money separate from government coffers.