Madrid/“If Alejandro Gil has been capable of betraying his principles, I will not hesitate to wish that the full weight of the law falls on him,” said his sister María Victoria this Saturday in statements to 14ymedio. He added that a “source close to the investigation” has “guaranteed” him that the prosecutor’s request is for “life imprisonment.”
María Victoria (Vicky) Gil Fernández feels “hurt and ashamed” by the information that the Cuban Prosecutor’s Office has provided about the former Minister of Economy and Financeaccused of espionage, embezzlement, money laundering and falsification of public documents. “I think of my parents who, wherever they are, will be covered in shame. The training they gave to both brothers was based on honesty and justice.”
His words leave no doubt that, far from the vision he shared with this newspaper in March 2024, when he emphasis on the presumption of innocence due to the then recently detained man, today he is closer to believing in his brother’s guilt.
The former Cuban television presenter, a lawyer by training and currently residing in the Canary Islands, considers “exceptional the number of crimes charged”, especially espionage, “which is punishable by the death penalty.”
“In all cases, the accused were subject to custodial sanctions.”
Asked about the rest of the accused, about whom the public ministry has not provided any information, Vicky Gil claims to know nothing more than “last night’s broadcast on Cuban Television’s Estelar.” Regarding his sister-in-law, Gina María González, and his nephews, he says: “I don’t know the situation because I have blocked them.”
The brief note published by the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic already suggested that the maximum penalty – death by firing squad – would not be requested in this case, although it is still in force in the Penal Code. “In all cases, the accused were subject to custodial sanctions,” the text said, indicating that the use of a sanction that has not been applied since 2003 was ruled out.
The sister of the former minister also does not clear the whereabouts of Alejandro Gil, who remains unknown. In his interview last year, he ventured: “In Cuba there are some special houses, which belong to State Security, very good houses, in Miramar and Nuevo Vedado, where they take high-level, high-ranking people, in quotes, who are being investigated. It was the case of Carlos Lage and many others. They have all the luxuries and all the comforts, they are not given bad treatment, far from it. He must be in one of those houses, I don’t know at what address.”
On that occasion, Vicky Gil also said: “Until the Prosecutor’s Office charges any crime, you cannot say that he is corrupt. That is why I said that I will sue the program With Edgebecause the presumption of innocence is mandatory.” The former presenter was then surprised that at the beginning of February, when Gil was dismissed as minister, Miguel Díaz-Canel, with whom she was “close and personal”, had congratulated him on his birthday.
For the first time, the possibility of serious crimes “against the security of the State” is mentioned
“The biggest contradiction that exists is that the president of the Republic of Cuba dismisses my brother and that day he congratulates him for the achievements, and my brother answers: ‘thank you, Díaz-Canel, we are still with you’, and then on March 7 they announce that they are investigating him. How can the president of Cuba not know the things that are happening?”, he told 14ymedio.
The case of the former minister, dismissed in February 2024 after being presented for years as the “technical face” of the Díaz-Canel Government, remains shrouded in a mixture of secrecy and suspicion. For more than a year and a half, the official story was limited to talking about “serious errors in the performance of their duties,” without specifying specific charges. However, in the recent official note from the Prosecutor’s Office, for the first time, the possibility of serious crimes “against the security of the State” is mentioned.
Regarding the possibility of an exemplary trial, broadcast on television, the former presenter of the program De la Gran Escena added in her 2024 interview: “If a trial is held, as was done with Ochoa, that the State cleared itself of all its crimes against a person, it was cruel knowing behind Ochoa what there really was, the corruption that existed, I will go.”
The comparison with Arnaldo Ochoa, shot in July 1989 after a summary trial for drug trafficking and treason, was not fortuitous. The official program With Edge He had used images of the general to refer to the case of Alejandro Gil, demanding “the full weight of the law” against the defenestrated former minister.
