SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, Mexico.- An administrator of store of Sancti Spíritus was sentenced in recent days to 10 years in prison for the embezzlement of some 200,000 pesos in just 10 months of work.
The 35-year-old man, not identified in the article in the local official newspaper Escambray who reported the incident, worked as an administrator at the La Riviera winery, belonging to the Southern Base Business Unit (UEB) of the Municipal Commerce Company of Sancti Spíritus.
According to the media, at the hearing of the oral trial it emerged that the accused “illegally took over 24 products food and industrial goods, including rice from the regulated quota, raw and refined sugar, black beans, salt, bags of powdered milk, toiletries and more than 6,000 liters of kerosine.”
Also stolen alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, including beer cans and soft drink bottles; as well as cigarettes intended for sale to the population.
According to the data offered, the Municipal Commerce Company of Sancti Spíritus suffered an economic loss amounting to 174,882 pesos at cost prices of the products, “but the real damage is 200,127.41 pesos at sales prices to the population” .
He theft It would have caused, according to the official note, that Cubans did not receive all of the products in the regulated basic basket, which in recent times have been almost completely absent from warehouses.
Due to the fact, the business managers asked the Wholesale Food Company to replace the shortage to the population.
The sanction was imposed as part of case 236 of 2023 of the First Criminal Chamber of the Popular Provincial Court of Sancti Spíritus, where it was agreed to sentence “the accused to 10 years of deprivation of liberty as the author of the consummated crime of embezzlement, in addition of the corresponding accessory sanctions.”
In addition, you must repair the material damage caused for the sum of 200,127.41 pesos.
The acts of corruption and thefts in the warehouses confirm the desperation and hunger in which Cubans live, who resort to stealing the few products that enter the establishments.
This 2024, the Ministry of the Interior (Minint) included among the causes of these thefts the lack of lighting and protection in the warehouses, the shortage of guards and the little participation of the community in surveillance, without mentioning the food crisis suffered by Cubans. .
Last March, the Cuban regime said it was investigating 18 people involved in approximately 20 incidents of warehouse robberies. According to a report of the Television News (NTV)the criminal acts investigated generated losses of more than one million pesos (41,600 dollars at the official exchange rate) and had a significant impact on the basic basket of thousands of Havana residents.
In mid-2023the Minister of Internal Trade of the Cuban regime, Betsy Díaz Velázquez, during a meeting of the Economic Affairs Commission of Parliament Cubanindicated that at the end of May of that year, 361 criminal acts associated with forceful robberies in warehouses had been reported on the Island.
