Madrid/The imminent trial facing the former Minister of Economy and Finance Alejandro Gil Fernández, accused of serious crimes as embezzlement, money laundering and espionage, has twenty more defendants, among them “a deputy of the National Assembly of People’s Power and a secretary of the Communist Party.” This is stated by a source familiar with the case who requests anonymity for security reasons.
The same informant denies that the Prosecutor’s Office has requested for the former official life sentence. “The request for him is 30 years, and everyone else is asked for sentences of at least 15 years,” he tells 14ymedio. The defendants, he continues, are 15 “plus another five or six who were released with precautionary measures.” Of some of them, he asserts, “the name is not said, they are under total secrecy, which implies that they could be military personnel or senior leaders.”
The source also reveals where Alejandro Gil is, whose whereabouts have not been made known since he was arrested in March 2024: in the maximum security prison of Guanajay, Artemisa, “in a regime against State security.” It is the same prison in which, for example, the political prisoner Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara is serving his sentence, and in which the former Minister of the Interior José Abrantes was detained in 1989 and died.
Gil is in the maximum security prison of Guanajay, Artemisa, “in a regime against State security”
It is very unlikely, this Cuban ventures, that the process will be public, as the former minister’s daughter requested. Laura María Gil Gonzálezin a series of posts on Facebook the day after the Prosecutor’s Office statement became known. In them, the woman said that her father “remains firm in his defense and will not recognize under any circumstances, any crime that is accused of him and that has not been duly verified”, in addition to requesting “an open-door trial, where everyone who wishes participates, and is televised live”, both by national and international networks, and covered by “official and unofficial media.”
According to legal experts consulted by this newspaper, the fact that they are accusing Alejandro Gil of espionage, one of the most serious crimes in the Cuban Penal Code – which even provides for the death penalty on paper – is what provides cover for a trial without publicity. Asked about this, the former minister’s sister, María Victoria Gil, as a trained lawyer, agrees: “I believe that this crime has been brought up by the hair to justify the trial behind closed doors, based on the fact that it is a crime whose public knowledge entails damage to sovereignty and national security.”
After learning of her niece’s publications, Vicky Gil confesses to this newspaper that, once again, she doubts the process and, above all, that her brother is a spy. Thus, she completely agrees with Gil González in demanding a transparent process: “I am skeptical about everything, but I do believe that the only opportunity there is to make things clear is through a public trial, in which the international press can enter.”
This Wednesday, Laura María Gil spoke again on the subject on your Facebook wall. In his text, he alludes to this Tuesday’s broadcast of With Edge –where Friday’s statement from the Prosecutor’s Office was mentioned in passing but the issue was avoided in depth–, a program to which he expresses his “respect” and about which he says: “Finally, an official media recognizes, in its own way, what the presumption of innocence really means and that one cannot speak without foundations.”
“Finally, an official media outlet recognizes, in its own way, what the presumption of innocence really means”
At the same time, he regrets the “wave of accusations, insults, apathy, offenses, baseness, levels and human meanness” that he has suffered in recent days, among which the word “traitor” stands out. “From my first statement I confirmed that my cause is not political, I am not asking for heads to roll, nor for the participation of international media to undermine, but rather as a third-party observer who can reflect reality impartially,” he says. And he states: “It is dishonorable and reprehensible that a daughter is insulted in such a way for demonstrating unconditional love for her father and defending him with justice and truth, guaranteeing due process. My demand for a public trial is based, precisely, on the citizen transparency that we have praised so much: if it was a state secret, then it was not even necessary to mention it.”
His publications have been echoed in different media and, above all, have gathered numerous comments from Cubans both inside and outside the Island. Many reproach him for not speaking out in the past when so many imprisoned people suffered unfair and non-public trials, such as the protesters of July 11, 2021, others repudiate the figure of Alejandro Gil as a disastrous Minister of Economy, but the majority express themselves in understanding terms, like the user Dyrack Yai: “Even without agree with nothing that your father defended and be against this ‘government’ management, I recognize and defend your absolute right to advocate for justice for your father. That is true democracy, understanding and empathizing with others on a human level, leaving aside small pettiness.
Until he was removed from office in February of last year, Alejandro Gil was not only Minister of Economy and Planning, but also Deputy Prime Minister and right-hand man of Miguel Díaz-Canel. On March 7, 2024, criminal proceedings were initially announced against the official, in a brief note signed by the president himself alleging, without further details, “serious errors committed in the performance of his duties.”
The next thing that was known about the case, 20 months later, was the statement from the Prosecutor’s Office last Friday, where, without providing numbers or names, it spoke of “other defendants” and reported that Gil was accused of “espionage, acts detrimental to economic activity or contracting, embezzlement, bribery, falsification of public documents, tax evasion, influence peddling, money laundering, violation of the rules for the protection of classified documents and theft and damage to documents or other objects in official custody.”
