The United States Government has announced this Tuesday new sanctions directed against Annalie Lilliam Rueda Cardero, daughter-in-law of former Cuban president Raúl Castro, as well as against five companies on the island, including two from the mining sector and a financial entity, for their ties to the current Cuban authorities.
The Treasury Department has added Rueda, partner of Alejandro Castro Espín, to the list of sanctioned individuals, after he was the subject of the same measure in early June along with his father and the current president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in addition to other relatives of high-ranking officials of the regime.
The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has also included five companies, three of them integrated into the conglomerate controlled by the Cuban Armed Forces, the Business Administration Group (GAESA).
Among these are Almancenes Universales, dedicated to logistics, storage, and transport services, which also manages container movement in the port of Mariel—about 45 kilometers west of Havana—; Rafin, responsible for providing financial services to GAESA; and Banco Financiero Internacional, a banking entity absorbed by the military group a decade ago and which handles operations with foreign companies working both inside and outside the Caribbean country.
Likewise, the department led by Scott Bessent has sanctioned Geominera, a state-owned company dependent on the Ministry of Energy and Mines, and the steel company José Martí, considered by Washington as Cuba's largest producer of "raw" steel.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio reiterated on his social media that GAESA has been "the main vector for the regime's elites to appropriate the island's scarce resources, diverting them towards repression, anti-American subversion, and espionage, instead of allocating them to schools, power plants, and basic needs for the Cuban people."
In the same vein, he pointed out that the reality in the country "as the island's communist regime—corrupt, brutal, and anti-American—continues to prioritize its own absolute control over the freedom, opportunities, and basic well-being of the Cuban people."
The head of US diplomacy, of Cuban origin, has also warned that anyone who provides support or services to the entities included in this list "runs the risk of being sanctioned" and has urged foreign companies to "immediately" suspend any operations they maintain with the companies singled out.
For his part, the Cuban Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodríguez, has criticized measures that, he said, seek to "tighten the noose around the economy" of the country and that, in his opinion, Washington adopts because Havana is proving to be "stronger, more capable and more effective than it expected in the face of ruthless aggression and collective punishment against the people and their living conditions."
Furthermore, he assured on his social networks that what "drives" Rubio -- whom he branded "dishonest and mendacious" -- "is a crime."
The Trump Administration had already approved sanctions at the beginning of the month against the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, the travel agency Amistur Cuba S.A., the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples, and the mining company La Victoria.
It has also established in practice a blockade on fuel supply and has been increasing pressure on the island with the aim of forcing the departure of the communist authorities who have governed Cuba since 1959.