Activists reveal PPP loans to U.S. companies associated with Cuban regime enterprises

Cuban activists have taken to social media to criticize a group of companies registered in Florida, some of which maintain contracts with the Cuban regime-sponsored enterprises, for applying for Paycheck Protection Program loans relief (PPP) from the U.S. government during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Among those criticized, was Fuego Enterprises Inc, which according to ProPublica, requested $64,180.

Fuego Enterprises lists itself as a Travel Agency, but is an asset management company in the financial services sector, according to its Bloomberg profile. 

The company has reportedly held an active license by the Cuban regime since 2021 to market agri-food products, handicrafts, and consumer goods, and was originally founded in 2004. It was previously known as Grupo para el Desarrollo de Negocios con Cuba (in English Cuba Business Development Group) until 2014. It is owned by Cuban American businessman Hugo Cancio.

The entity's own website reveals that Fuego owns On Cuba Travel, a certified Travel Service Provider in Florida organizing trips to Cuba that promotes itself as being "a full-service agency with direct investments and active management of hospitality properties in the island." 

Another company associated with Cuban-sponsored enterprises is Treew LLC, based in Hialeah. Treew LLC is part of a network of virtual stores operating around the world and selling products to be delivered inside the island and other services that revolve around Cuba, profiting mostly from Cuban family members who live in the U.S. or abroad.

Until 2014, Treew LLC was listed as an affiliate or operating envios.supermarket.treew.com, the online store affiliated with the Palco Group in Cuba, records show. 

The Treew network is also linked to online retailer Supermarket 23. In August, Florida's Attorney General Ashley Moody, received a complaint alleging unfair and deceptive trade practices against the Miami-registered online retailer, according to a letter sent by the government office.

In the Treew network of virtual stores, different international partners direct customers to the Treew Inc. business umbrella with the subdomain Supermercado Treew (supermarket.treew.com), a series of virtual stores affiliated to the Palenque Restaurant in Cuba, which belongs to the Palco Group, now also under the control of the regime's military conglomerate GAESA.

Today, Palco Group belongs to the military conglomerate GAESA, which is on the State Department’s List of Restricted Entities and Subentities Associated with Cuba (“Cuba Restricted List” or “CRL”). 

The CRL is a list of entities and subentities “under the control of, or acting for or on behalf of the Cuban military, intelligence, or security services or personnel with which direct financial transactions would disproportionately benefit such services or personnel at the expense of the Cuban people or private enterprise in Cuba.”

Supermarket Treew was managed in Cuba by Luis Mazorra Perez, a reputed retired Cuban intelligence officer stationed at various posts in Latin America during the late 1980s who still resides in Cuba, according to a former U.S. intelligence community contractor with deep familiarity of Cuban intelligence that spoke to ADN America only on the condition of anonymity.

During a trip to the U.S., Mazorra reportedly visited the headquarters of Rey Envios in Hialeah, the DBA (Doing Business As) of Treew LLC, also associated with supermarketcuba.com.

Pictured on the left is Luis Mazorra with Rafael Rey Ponce of Rey Envios. On the right Mazorra shows his Visa application to the USA in 2014. | Redes Sociales

According to the same former intelligence contractor, Mazorra Perez is now retired from the intelligence services, and although he lives in Cuba, he regularly travels abroad. 

Mazorra Perez is the son-in-law of the late Brigadier General Manuel Fernandez Crespo, head of the DGCI (General Directorate of Counterintelligence) between 1985 and 1989.

As head of MININT counterintelligence, Mazorra Perez's father-in-law investigated and testified against the very famous Cuban General Arnaldo Ochoa during Case 1 in 1989. Fernández Crespo died in 2006, according to the official Cuban press. General Abelardo Colomé Ibarra, who was Minister of the Interior and Vice President of Cuba until he died in 2015, was present at Fernández Crespo’s funeral with his family.

ADN America reached out to Mazorra Perez and Rey Envios in the past when publishing this investigation on June 23, and has never received an answer.

Activists also pointed out to CubaMax Travel Inc, a Florida agency authorized by the Cuban dictatorship to manage charter flights to Havana and which got $149,276 forgiven. Interesting, Cuba Max asked for the loan first on April 8, 2020, attesting in their application that the loans were necessary for their continuing operation, but which recently came under fire for sponsoring an event in Cuba organized by Cuba's first lady," the San Remo Music Awards.

During the pandemic, the company was charging Florida exiles $20 per pound to ship packages to their relatives in Havana. It most recently received criticism for charging $4,149 for a flight from Cuba to Nicaragua, also payable in cash at one of several offices in the Miami area.

The route is known to be an illegal immigration path that critics argue has been opened by the Cuban regime in complicity with Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua after the July 11 protests to expel the opposition.

Another Cuba service-related company is Cuba Educational Travel LLC, owned by Collin Laverty and which offers travel services to school groups and political think tanks. Laverty is on the board of the Center for Democracy in the Americas(CDA), a group that advocates for the removal of sanctions against Cuba.

Mr. Laverty is also reportedly on the board of Bridges of Love (Puentes de Amor, in Spanish), an anti-embargo NGO that U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio asked the FBI to investigate in correlation to the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

A portion of Cuba Educational Travel LLC staff is located in Cuba, according to a Harvard article of 2018, which also said that part of the founders of the company lives in Havana.

Cuba Travel Services Inc also received a PPP loan of $484,347 and got $262,179 forgiven. Xael Cahrters Inc, founded by the late Xiomara Almaguer-Levy, a well-known advocate of dialogue with Fidel Castro, received more than $130,000. 

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, America’s travel industry was among the hardest hit, but the U.S. travel business to the island of Cuba which flourish during the Obama engagement, began to fall way before COVID-19 when Trump rolled back Obama-era policies and strengthen U.S sanctions.

The U.S. Travel Association projected a loss of 4.6 million jobs through May 2020, a figure likely to increase. U.S. weekly jobless claims skyrocketed to a stunning 6.6 million, doubling in a week and by far the biggest spike in half a century.

One of the biggest changes during Trump was to restrict "people-to-people" visas that thousands of Americans were using in recent years to travel to Cuba.

Recently, the Small Business Administration came under fire for disbursing millions of taxpayer dollars in COVID-19 loans intended to keep American businesses afloat to foreign IP addresses in China, Russia, and countries designated state sponsors of terror by the State Department, according to a newly released inspector general report.

Foreign IP addresses in Iran, Syria, and Cuba — which are designated state sponsors of terrorism by the State Department — received tens of thousands from the SBA. Iran received nearly $166K, Syria received $23,500, and Cuba got $276K.

The Paycheck Protection Program had the highest percentage of cases of criminal activity of all the pandemic relief programs, according to the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee's recent Semiannual Report to Congress.