Havana/Panama has become a center of operations for Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, The Crabfavorite grandson of Raúl Castro and son of the late head of the Business Administration Group (Gaesa), Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja. This is revealed by a joint investigation published this Monday by Armando.infothe Latin American Center for Journalistic Research (CLIP), Transparencia Venezuela in Exile and the newspaper The Press of Panama, which has exposed the connections between Cuban leaders and businessmen close to Nicolás Maduro.
According to the report, Rodríguez Castro has traveled to Panama since 2015, although he began to do so more frequently starting in 2024, and always on private planes. One of these, a Learjet with registration YV-3440, crashed on September 24 at the Simón Bolívar International Airport of Maiquetía, and two people, the crew, died in the accident. Two others survived. Among them, the Panamanian businessman Ramón Carretero Napolitano, one of Chavismo’s favorite contractors and a central figure in the network discovered by the investigation.
The accident was what led to connecting information that leads to Rodríguez Castro. Thus, the report indicates, El Cangrejo made 13 trips to Panama, in 2024 alone. The dates of his flights that year coincided with key days in Panamanian politics. One of them occurred on May 1, four days before the presidential elections were held in which José Mulino would emerge as the winner. Rodríguez Castro traveled accompanied by Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, brigadier general, deputy and current president of Gaesa, and other unidentified senior officials of the regime. The investigation indicates that the official has strong ties in that country, since she appears in several companies in Panama, some of them owning real estate in the capital.
Two months later, El Cangrejo returned to Panama, when Mulino assumed power
Two months later, El Cangrejo returned to Panama, when Mulino assumed power. It is unknown if he attended the Government inauguration ceremony or related events, but he soon returned to Cuba, on July 3, according to his records of arrivals and departures from that country.
As for 2025, it has recorded at least 10 flights. The last one was a trip made between September 28 and 30. A week before, Raúl Castro’s grandson and a companion were in the province of Chiriquí. The Cubans would have acquired goods for which they “paid a lot of money,” revealed intelligence sources who added that this is not the first time they have gone shopping in Panama. They would also have done the same – on an unspecified date – in Coclé, in the center of the country, where he would have properties, although this information could not be corroborated, the text indicates.
According to the investigation, these movements occurred mainly in Venezuelan aircraft or those registered in aeronautical havens such as the small European state of San Marino, which does not have any airport, but which promotes civil aeronautical registration under its jurisdiction.
Although El Cangrejo’s presence in Panama has increased since last year, its visits date back to early 2015. According to the report, it made at least three visits that year. In addition, there are records that confirm that he returned in October 2023 – only once – on the Learjet that crashed in Venezuela this year.
In this aircraft, the survivor Carrero Napolitano has made regular trips to Caracas, but also to Havana, cities in which the Caribbean Logistics Corporation operates. With this firm, the Panamanian businessman has obtained million-dollar contracts from the Chavista regime – up to 800 million dollars – since 2013, and has been registered for foreign commercial companies in Cuba since 1996, as revealed by the Official Gazette of that year.
Among its functions were those of “opening, mobilizing and closing current accounts and/or deposits”
The businessman has been investigated in Panama in cases such as New Business (a process for money laundering related to the purchase of Editorial Panamá América in 2010, which involves former president Ricardo Martinelli) and Financial Pacific, a defunct securities house, accused of financial crimes, between 2009 and 2011. In 2018 he left Panama to put things in between with rumors of possible arrest warrants, and since 2020, when the investigations cooled investigations, he resumed his private trips to Panama, Venezuela and Cuba, where there are records of his flights to Havana since 2004, although his trips then were not as frequent as in recent years.
Ramón Carretero Napolitano’s relationship with Havana goes beyond the commercial issue and has even permeated the diplomatic sphere. Edwin Abel Pitty Madrid, current ambassador of Panama in Cuba, is a commercial lawyer who, before arriving on the Island, had no diplomatic career, but has a history as a loyal employee of the Carretero Group, as he himself highlighted in his professional profile on Linkedin, but who has since canceled.
Since 2017, the now diplomat was appointed representative and a kind of “ambassador” of Carretero Napolitano’s company in Venezuela, according to documents from the Panamanian commercial registry. Among its functions were those of “opening, mobilizing and closing current accounts and/or deposits”, withdrawing “the funds that the company has deposited in banks, credit institutes, trading houses of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela”, as well as representing the company before the state-owned Venezuelan Foreign Trade Corporation.
Other links of the Cuban regime with Panama date back to the Panama Paperswhich exposed the presence of up to 11 companies offshore linked to the Island, which were registered in that country due to its tax system, which is frequently used to avoid supervision or tax obligations. Among them were Amadis Compañía Naviera SA, BB Naft Trading SA, Pescatlan SA, Acepex Management SA, Seagulls and Seafoods SA, Comercial Mercadu SA, Travelnet LTD, Resimevis Limited, Mavis Group SA, Técnica Hidráulica SA, Octagon Industrial LTD and Grupo Empresarial de Producciones Biopharmaceuticas y Químicas, Labiofam SA.
The database showed 19 references to legal entities linked to Cuba, among them the former president of the Association of Spanish Businessmen in Cuba, Víctor Moro Suárez, owner of the company Vimaassociated with Gaesa in the sale of food products in dollar stores. The then production director of Tabacuba, Inocente Osvaldo Encarnación, also appeared, in addition to the one who was commercial counselor of the Cuban Embassy in London, Alejandro Gutiérrez Madrigal, and the one who served as director of the Institute of Hydraulic Resources, Wilfredo Leyva Armesto.
