Green-clad security agents swoop down on an upscale business complex to shutter the offices of a Canadian car dealership. Top executives at Cuba's famed cigar monopoly find themselves behind bars. A former government minister trades his seat in power for a jail cell and a 15-year term.
President Raul Castro is matching his free market economic changes with a zealous battle against entrenched corruption on this Communist-run island, much of it involving Cuban officials at major state-run companies and ministries as well as the foreigners they do business with.
Cuba says the crusade is essential to save the socialist system. Others wonder at the timing of a crackdown that has sent a chill through the small foreign business community, just when the cash-strapped economy needs international financing to push the reforms along.
Cuba has battled corruption before, even executing a former revolutionary war hero on drug trafficking charges in 1989. But past arrests have been largely limited to Cubans. Analysts say the current crackdown seems different, with Canadian, French, Czech, Chilean and English citizens jailed or sentenced for their alleged roles, and scores of small South American and European companies kicked out of the country.
The sale of Korean cars and car parts slowed this year as two top distributors, both Canadian, became ensnared. Meanwhile products like Chilean wine, juice and tomato paste temporarily disappeared from supermarket shelves, replaced after a few months by other brands. One thing is clear. The rules of doing business in Cuba have changed dramatically under Raul.
While the non-profit Transparency International says Cuba ranks better than average worldwide in a measure of corruption and is third best in Latin America and the Caribbean, graft here can be more corrosive because the state controls nearly the entire economy.
Companies wanting to do business with Cuba must present their cases directly to midlevel government officials who may make about $20 a month. There is no open bidding for contracts and decisions go unexplained, which businessmen say opens the possibility of graft.
A South American importer with a decade of experience selling food products to Cuba before he was expelled for alleged corruption in 2009 said the payoffs can take many forms: from the gift of a bit of gas money, a free meal or a computer pen drive for a relatively junior "international purchaser," to free trips abroad, computers, flat-screen TVs or large deposits of cash in foreign bank accounts for senior officials.
"The forms of persuasion let's call it that are nearly infinite," he said, adding that the system is so pervasive that "a businessman must always have a wad of cash to stuff the pocket of a guayabera," the loose-fitting traditional Cuban dress shirt.
Cuban officials have not said what impact the crackdown will have on the island's economy, but they have warned repeatedly that widespread graft has the potential to destroy it. "The fight against corruption is vitally important," said Comptroller General Gladys Bejerano, a stern, poker-faced official who is spearheading the investigations. "It doesn't produce fatalities and there are no bombs or blood ... but it is the only thing that can bring down the revolution because it destroys our values and morality and it corrodes our institutions."