Madrid/one day later that the ruling party accused to The Touch of currency trafficking and tax evasion, two of the members of his team, the editor-in-chief, José Jasán Nieves, and the coordinator of his legal area, Eloy Viera, have come out against the “aggressions of official spokespersons” and accuse the Cuban Government of launching distraction tactics to not recognize that “their model is failed.”
Nieves spoke with the EFE agency, to which he explained the economic functioning of The Touchwhich is no secret nor does it differ from the usual practices of any Cuban citizen. “There is no such thing as ‘economic terrorism’ nor are we mercenaries at the service of anyone. And we have not participated in any currency trafficking or tax evasion actions,” he stated.
Nieves explained that around 50% of the annual budget of The Touch – which ranges, according to their own statements, between 800,000 and one million dollars – comes, in effect, from American international cooperation.
Furthermore, he acknowledged that The Touch resorts to informal remittances, as it was said in official media, to “facilitate access to funds” for participants in “training and public diplomacy programs of the United States Embassy in Havana.”
“We use for them the same mechanisms that Cubans use to send remittances to Cuba; mechanisms that do not go through the control of the regime,” he indicated.
This is the “most advantageous route to guarantee that the beneficiaries of international cooperation and public diplomacy programs receive the money for their projects,” since the formal route “supposes that their money is converted at the unrealistic rates maintained” by the Government.
As Nieves explained, this is the “most advantageous route to guarantee that the beneficiaries of international cooperation and public diplomacy programs receive the money for their projects,” since the formal route “supposes that their money is converted at the unrealistic rates maintained” by the Government. This Friday, the dollar stands at 460 pesos in the informal market, compared to the official rate of 24 for legal entities and 120 for individuals.
The editor-in-chief of The Touch He maintains that in the Government “they are desperate to find a new scapegoat to divert attention from their resounding failure and the crisis in which they have plunged the country.”
The Government announced at the end of last year that this 2025 it would establish a floating exchange rate to reduce distortions in the money market, but they are, in Nieves’ opinion, “incapable.” Meanwhile, he added, they seek to extract foreign currency “everywhere, because they are bankrupt.” “They need to show themselves as victims of some external conspiracy so as not to recognize that their model is flawed,” he concluded.
For his part, Eloy Viera, from The Touch legal, released a video and a newsletter to the readers of the medium – shared by Nieves on his Facebook profile – in which he denounced the regime’s new barrage for “the construction of a criminal case against members and collaborators” of the organization.
Viera denounces that there are people without ties to Mas Voces Foundation – legal support of The Touch– that “they were subjected to psychological torture sessions of more than eight hours at the headquarters of the State Security investigation body, known as Villa Marista, with the aim of making them ‘testify’ in an alleged criminal case” against the media
The expert mocks that “a year after” those efforts, information that is public is presented as major revelations, such as the organization’s contracts with entities of the US federal government, which are transparent by their very nature. The same occurs with the programs they have carried out jointly with the US Embassy in Havana, which range from courses for farmers to film festivals and which have been paid for through remittances.
“Whoever only obeys orders and is incapable of thinking for himself projects his submissive attitude towards others. The Touch “We do not receive guidance or orders from the State Department or anyone else,” he claims.
“Those who only obey orders and are incapable of thinking for themselves project their submissive attitude towards others. At El Toque we do not receive guidance or orders from the State Department or anyone else”
Viera reproaches that statements from collaborators have been manipulated and cut to “build the story” against Nieves, as well as exposing what his home is, exaggerating the price and forgetting the concept of mortgage “swept away from the Cuban economic reality by the communist dictatorship of the last 65 years.”
According to the text, the Government intends to include the members of the platform on the national list of terrorists to “extend the mantle of aggression. This is the only way that the Cuban Government has to respond to citizen demands for its inability to manage the crisis in which it has plunged the country.”
In the text, Viera thanks the multiple supports received in the last few hours and remembers that, economically, they will continue to provide the service of informal market rates as mandatory information of use to the population, something that will last “as long as the Cuban regime persists in neglecting its responsibility to act in the face of the consequences of its own economic policies.”
“Censorship and opacity in access to data of public interest have been used as tools of oppression of the Cuban people for more than six decades. Anger louder, they will not silence us,” he concludes.
