The former Cuban Minister of Economy Alejandro Gilwho less than two years ago was a close collaborator of the president, Miguel Diaz-Caneland in charge of implementing the island’s great monetary reform, was sentenced to life imprisonment for a dozen crimes, including espionage.
Gil’s sentence, announced this Monday in a note released by the Supreme People’s Court of Cuba, puts an end to a chapter that began in February 2024, with his sudden dismissal after having been at the head of the Ministry of Economy and Planning since Díaz-Canel’s first mandate, in 2018.
The former deputy prime minister is also the top official dismissed for corruption on the island in decades. His accusation came as a surprise. The Cuban president sent him a “grateful hug” on social networks hours after his dismissal.
A month later, Díaz-Canel himself reported that Gil was being investigated for “serious errors” and stated that “neither the Party (Communist of Cuba, PCC, the only legal one) nor the Government” would allow “the proliferation of corruption, simulation and insensitivity”.
In its note this Monday, the court stated that the former minister was considered guilty of espionage; acts detrimental to economic activity or contracting; bribery and theft and damage to documents or other objects, documents or other objects in official custody and violation of official seals and violation of the rules for the protection of classified documents.
The former member of the Central Committee of the PCC was tried for these crimes in a first trial that was held behind closed doors in Havana between November 11 and 13.
In addition, Gil was tried in a second trial, held between November 26 and 29, for bribery to commit falsification of public documentsinfluence peddling and tax evasion, all three on a continuous basis. For this reason he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, the court indicated.
Both sentences can be appealed within 10 days.
In their note, the judges stated that the former official “deceived the leadership of the country and the people he represented, thereby generating damage to the economy” and “failed to comply with work processes with the classified official information that it handled, stole it, damaged it and finally made it available to enemy services.”
The Supreme People’s Court considered that these “highly harmful behaviors” make the person under investigation worthy of a “severe criminal response” by establishing that “betrayal of the country “It is the most serious of crimes and whoever commits it is subject to the most severe penalties.”
Until before his fall from grace, Gil acted on the island as one of the members of the Cabinet with the greatest media exposure.
He was also in charge of implementing the great reform of 2021 (designed by others since 2010), which tried to end the use of a double currency in Cuba. The controversial Ordering Task It was a failure that sank the value of the peso and opened the doors to dollarization on the island.
He was also in charge of applying the first adjustment measures to try to stabilize the economy. Among them stood out the controversy rise in fuelincreases of up to 400%.