• Submitted by: manso
• Society
• 08 / 09 / 2011

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Officials of the telecommunications company ETECSA are reportedly being questioned.

By Juan O. Tamayo.elnuevoherald.com. Cuban prosecutors are investigating several top officials of ETECSA, the state telecommunications monopoly, on allegations of corruption, according to knowledgeable sources in Havana and Miami.

José Remos, a former senior Cuban telecommunications official who now lives in Miami, told El Nuevo Herald on Saturday that former co-workers in Cuba had told him that several top company officials are detained in connection with a fiber-optic cable financed by Venezuela.

 Havana residents separately said that the version making the rounds there has several top ETECSA officials detained or under interrogation as part of an investigation into corruption, although the exact allegations were not known.

No reporting

Cuba’s state-controlled news media has not reported at all on the case. It traditionally reports on corruption cases only when they involve foreigners or already have become widely known on the island and abroad.

If the ETECSA reports are true, it would be the latest in the long string of major corruption scandals that have shaken Cuba since the Raúl Castro government began moving the island toward a so-called “socialist market economy.”

Petty corruption was historically tolerated in Cuba’s communist-run system when the values involved were relatively small, such as items pilfered from factory warehouses or bribes paid to police and health and tax inspectors to look the other way.

 “But now there’s more money involved, so it’s more spectacular,” said Larry Catá Baker, a professor of international affairs at Pennsylvania State University’s school of law who monitors Cuba issues.

 While the exact nature of the corruption alleged in the ETECSA case remained unknown, the Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A., considered one of the largest enterprises on the island, marked two milestones this year.

On Feb. 8, the Alba-1 fiber-optic cable from Venezuela reached Cuba after a four-year wait. The $70 million cable was financed by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez as part of Cuba’s integration with his regional movement, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America.

Via satellite

Cuba’s external telecommunications, now funneled through slow and expensive satellite connections, will soon move through the cable, which can carry 10 million telephone calls at the same time and increase the speed of the transmission of digital data by a factor of 3,000.

And in January, Telecom Italia sold its 27 percent ownership of ETECSA to Rafin, a Cuban firm Rafín was created in 1997 with the stated purpose of negotiating, buying and selling financial instruments, and paid $706 million to the Italian telecommunication company, according to the news reports.

Raúl Castro has tried to crack down on the burgeoning corruption since he succeeded his brother in 2006, putting his son, Alejandro, in charge of the anti-corruption campaign and creating the powerful comptroller general’s office to audit state enterprises.

Source: //www.miamiherald.com/2011/08/07/2350047/