MIAMI — While ordinary Cubans endure near-constant blackouts, food shortages, and a currency-control system that has bled the country of tens of billions of dollars over the decades, an investigation by the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald has revealed that the Cuban military’s business empire, GAESA, was sitting on roughly $18 billion in liquid assets as of March 2024 — a sum that exceeds the international reserves of countries including Costa Rica, Panama, and Uruguay.
Investigation
Based on leaked internal financial documents from 2023 and 2024, the Herald’s reporting found that GAESA (Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A.) — the sprawling conglomerate controlled by Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) — held approximately $17.9 to $18 billion in current assets that could be rapidly converted to cash, not counting resources held separately by Cimex, one of its constituent companies.
Of that total, roughly $14.4 to $14.5 billion was deposited directly in bank accounts or financial institutions tied to the military group itself, according to the documents, in many cases beyond the reach of Cuba’s own civilian authorities.
GAESA reported $2.1 billion in net profits during just the first quarter of 2024 alone. Just three of its subsidiary companies — Gaviota, TRD Caribe, and Almacenes Universales — accounted for more than $13 billion of the total on their own. Gaviota, which manages Cuba’s tourist hotels, alone held more than $4.26 billion in bank accounts — a figure the Herald noted is nearly 13 times the $339 million the Cuban government claims it needs annually to purchase medications for the population.
A Conglomerate With No Public Accountability
GAESA’s structure is designed to resist scrutiny. The conglomerate has no public website, no known institutional email, and no official public contact channels. It publishes no financial statements and does not appear in Cuba’s state budget.
Neither Cuba’s National Assembly of People’s Power nor its General Comptroller’s Office has authority to audit its accounts — a fact that became public knowledge only by accident, when Cuba’s then-comptroller general, Gladys Bejerano, admitted during a 2024 interview with EFE that the state lacked jurisdiction to audit GAESA, a disclosure that reportedly contributed to her removal after 14 years in the post.
According to Cuban economic researcher Emilio Morales, real decision-making power within the conglomerate rests with no more than 15 people — an anonymous, tightly controlled group in which each subsidiary company is assigned its own dedicated IT specialist, accountant, and counterintelligence officer to oversee its books.
Public Funds Diverted Even as Deficits Persist
The leaked documents also detail cases in which GAESA subsidiaries received state resources despite the broader government’s chronic inability to fund basic services.
Almest, GAESA’s hotel-construction arm, reportedly received 668 million pesos from the state budget — funds diverted, the reporting noted, from sectors including health care and education. Almest declared 4.7 billion pesos in state and public-sector investment as part of its capital, yet reported paying only 2 million pesos in taxes and contributions to the state budget.
The company had also taken on foreign loans to build hotels, reportedly carrying long-term debt of roughly 45 billion Cuban pesos (approximately $1.8 billion).
Washington’s Response
The findings have become a recurring talking point for U.S. officials pressing Havana over its economic policies. The State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs has publicly questioned why GAESA does not use its financial reserves to address urgent needs, including restoring Cuba’s collapsing electrical infrastructure amid massive, near-constant blackouts.
“Cuba’s economic crisis, due to the regime’s incompetence, is no mystery,” the bureau said in a statement. “While the Cuban people suffer near-constant power outages, crumbling infrastructure, and product shortages, GAESA, managed by the military, controls most of the island’s economy and holds a financial reserve of $18 billion.”
The findings have also fueled scrutiny of Cuba’s dealings with international creditors, calling into question years of Havana’s stated excuses for its inability to repay foreign debt.
The GAESA revelations fit within a wider body of reporting and analysis this year documenting the mechanics of Cuban state wealth extraction — including a separate economist’s calculation that Venezuela’s own currency-control regime bled that country of $161.3 billion in capital flight, and the U.S. State Department’s own 100-page report this year characterizing Cuba’s economic and intelligence apparatus as central to sustaining the country’s government at its population’s expense.
Together, these findings have become a recurring reference point in Washington’s broader case that Cuba’s economic crisis stems from deliberate resource concentration by the state and military elite, rather than from the U.S. embargo Havana has long cited as the primary cause of the country's hardship.
What To Come
GAESA’s opacity means independent verification of its current holdings remains difficult, and Cuban authorities have not publicly responded in detail to the Herald’s findings.
With Cuba’s blackouts, fuel shortages, and broader economic crisis continuing well into 2026, and Washington’s rhetorical pressure campaign against Havana intensifying on multiple fronts this year, the GAESA figures are likely to remain a persistent point of reference in the ongoing dispute over who bears responsibility for the conditions facing ordinary Cubans.
