MIAMI, United States. — Claudio Cardini, a 67-year-old Italian businessman, has become famous in recent months for being one of those promoting business with the island’s regime.
A report from the digital portal Yucabyte reveals that Cardini has been one of the figures that has appeared again and again in meetings between high-level Cuban officials and delegations of businessmen and politicians from Italy, one of the Caribbean island’s main trading partners in Europe.
The independent media maintains that Claudio Cardini has large interests in the Cuban tourism industry and that he owns Daiquiri Tours and ECV Caribe. The first is “a travel agency that in recent years has expanded into organizing nature excursions and the rental of tourist vehicles”; and the second “a chain that already manages two Cuban hotel complexes and that, at least until a few years ago, hoped to obtain management contracts for another seven, located mainly in natural environments.”
According to YucabyteCardini “has established himself as an intermediary of the Cuban regime, someone who in the last year and a half has worked actively bringing dozens of Italian businessmen and officials interested in doing business to Cuba…, helping the regime find potential sources of foreign investment and political support just when he seems to need them most.
The digital portal explains that in February 2021 Cardini received in his offices in Havana the designated president Miguel Díaz-Canel, the prime minister Manuel Marrero, and the deceased Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Callejawho directed until his death the Business Administration Group (GAESA), a dependency of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR).
“Cardini is not only important to the regime because of the number of tourists that he can take to Cuba or the nature businesses that he can promote within the country. It is also important because of the number of Italian businessmen and civil servants that he can attract to invest,” says Yucabyte, who also recalls that the Italian chairs Entrepreneurs for Cuba, an Italian entity dedicated to promoting business and investment in the largest of the Antilles.
Claudio Cardini is also one of the executives of the Confederation of Italians in the World (CIM), an organization that brings together businessmen scattered in more than thirty countries and is chaired by the socialists Angelo Sollazzo and Caldoro Stefano.
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