Determined to uncover the anthill of illegal trade, the Cuban Government does not have enough pages in the official newspapers to air cases of corruption, overpricing, theft, illicit distribution, electronic fraud and, lately, robberies in currency exchange operations in the black market The timid daily reports from the Ministry of the Interior do not allow us to measure the entire problem, but they say a lot about the seriousness of the situation.
A report published Tuesday in the newspaper Tribune of Havana announced the results of a police operation in the municipality of Cotorro. The agents detained a group of Cubans who were storing “large amounts of food, cleaning and utility products” in two Girón buses, with Matanzas license plates, belonging to the Flor de Cuba and José M. Duarte state cooperatives.
The network, which operated at the interprovincial level, had accumulated an inventory that the newspaper was pleased to detail: almost 800 kilograms of chicken, 446 packages of sausages, 291 liters of oil, 660 cans of beer and 83 of Red Bull, 150 tubes of hash, plus small shipments of chocolate, wheat, broth concentrate, butter, and soaps.
The hunt for “corrupt” always ends up locating State establishments as the main providers of resale networks
The Ministry of the Interior assured that the products will be distributed in Social Security centers and in the State commercial network, which will receive the dividends resulting from their sale.
Another operation fell on a “warehouse” in San Miguel del Padron, which the Police located after a denunciation and from which they extracted 128 boxes containing 1,920 liters of oil. The newspaper attributed the success of the operation to “municipal groups confronting illegalities” in the popular council of Luyanó Moderno.
The hunt for “corrupt” always ends up locating State establishments as the main providers of resale networks. In the well-known Ultra store, in Central Havana, 190 tubes of picadillo were seized, which cost the manager, the floor manager and the person in charge of the store a sanction.
On the other hand, in the La Palma agricultural market, in Arroyo Naranjo, a shortfall of 371,300 pesos in sales was discovered, after the manipulation of the prices of the products, for which the inspectors decided to fine those responsible.
Another case of false prices occurred in the store Artex of the municipality of Boyeroswhich was reported in a brief note in Tribune of Havana, accompanied by abundant photographs of the operation. The culprits, says the Ministry of the Interior, were both employees and administrators.
This Wednesday, the Police described in Granma a new kind of scam. The uniformed officers, they said, are mainly faced with “cases of robbery with the use of violence”, but in recent times “unfortunate events” have occurred through digital communications.
“The use of social networks to propose the illicit sale or purchase of foreign currency is confirmed, mostly at a lower price than that set for its commercialization,” they pointed out in their description of the hook used by criminals to attract their potential victims.
False names, several telephone lines and foreign numbers are, in the opinion of the Police, the tools of the scammers
“The interest of the authors is to steal large sums of money, and for this they agree with their victims in order to carry out the exchange, generally in tall buildings, remote places or houses with several entrances and exits, an event that ends in a robbery through trickery or deception, intimidation of people, physical force, the use of knives or other objects,” the agents surmised.
False names, several telephone lines and foreign numbers are, in the opinion of the Police, the tools of the scammers, to whom they attribute “good physical appearance and empathic characteristics”.
The Ministry of the Interior did not offer more details about its operations against digital trading, but warned that it had already arrested several criminals, to whom “due process has been applied.” According to the note, the Police do not receive too many complaints from the victims, who fear being also involved in the crime. For this reason, the officers encourage those who have been swindled to “go to the stations” to file a complaint.
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