Thursday, May 18, 2006

Cuba: World's largest plantation and its wealthy overlord

NewsMax via Babalú

According to Humberto Fontova, castro's estimated worth of $900 million is just spare change.
Castro's True Wealth

Humberto Fontova
Thursday, May 18, 2006

When Forbes magazine named him among the world's richest heads of state in 2005, a furious Fidel Castro denounced it as "infamy!" "Do they think I'm some kind of Mobutu?" he raged. At the time, Forbes estimated his fortune at $550 million.

This year Forbes raised his ranking to the world's seventh-richest head of state, with an estimated fortune of $900 million. "Repugnant slander!" Castro thundered on Cuban television (all 12 of them) this week. The "president" of Cuba's National Bank, Francisco Soberon, also chimed in:

"The Cuban revolution and its Maximum Leader are an example of honesty and ethical conduct in this chaotic and corrupt world into which the empire has cast humanity."

Actually, Castro has a point. He has no business being lumped in with measly millionaire chumps like Mobutu Sese Seko and Queen Elizabeth. Forbes admits that its estimate of Castro's wealth is "more art than science" and is based on his partial ownership of state enterprises, among them the Havana Convention Center, the Cimex retail conglomerate and Medicuba.

But as Cuban-American scholar Eugenio Yanez asks, why not include many other, and much larger, Cuban state enterprises like Cubatabaco, Artex, Cubacatricos, Cubatecnica, Gaviota, Acemex, Cubatur, Antex, Caribat, Cubatur, and many more? The list is much longer than those singled out by Forbes.

Another method Forbes used was calculating that Castro owns roughly 10 percent of the Cuban GDP. Why only 10 percent? Continued...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That's just Castro, what about some of the other folks, like his own brother Raúl, other members of the heirarchy.

Orlando Furioso said...

A.

You can rest assured that it is a systemic problem, and that it runs up and down the castroit gang.