Cuba continues to fall in the world -class index on corruption

Cuba descended to position 41 in the 2024 corruption perception index (CPI), one point less than in 2023, revalidating its tendency to obtain increasingly lower ratings on the disastrous list, which each year reports international transparency.

“This system has corrupted society, we have lost all our values, everything has been destroyed in a painful way. Corruption is a necessity, it is a survival route, ”said Camagüeano lawyer Norges Galindo Buelga.

In this regard, he explained that within any sphere of society it is practically impossible to avoid or not touch corruption. In aspects as inexcusable as that of survival «you cannot acquire food if you do not go to markets involved in corruption.»

«If you want to buy beef, you have to buy it through someone who steals it from a meat company or who kills a beef,» mocking the illegality of the sacrifice of cattle greater than in Cuba entails high prison sentences.

In the regional context, Cuba only exceeds Guatemala with 25 points, Paraguay, with 24, Honduras, 22; Haiti, 16; Nicaragua, 14; Uruguay, 13 and Venezuela with 10.

The report, published on Tuesday, points out that «more than a quarter of the countries in the sample have obtained their lowest scores to date.» Among these is Cuba.

«The best job is where you can fight something,» Galindo Buelga said in reference to euphemism commonly used in Cuba to fight to steal.

«As you cannot live from the salary, you have to look for other alternatives and all the other alternatives in Cuba are criminal or constitutive of a corrupting act, therefore, it is linked to corruption,» he explained.

International Transparency, based in Berlin, Germany, commented in its report, about the «weakness and opacity of the Judiciary» in the Latin American region.

In this regard, the Cuban jurist referred to corruption in the island’s justice system. “The courts are corrupt. You can achieve with money to change your sanction, that you decrease or change the crime. You can even go to trial if you know where to put the money, if you have the right contacts. ”

In the public sector, officials use their jobs to obtain personal benefits: «You want .

Some of the variables to determine the index are the bribery levels, the diversion of public funds, the officials who use their public office to obtain private benefits, excessive bureaucracy in the public sector and nepotist appointments in the public service.

«Corruption in Cuba is an endemic evil of the system itself that enlivens the powers that give certain figures that fulfill, above all things, with loyalty to the political system,» said the independent journalist Rolando Rodríguez Lobaina, From Baracoa, Guantanamo.

“How loyalty to the political system is a priority, here are these cases, people who place them in certain spheres of power and divert funds, whether they are heads of companies, figures from local governments, in the provinces, municipalities. Even these people get to power in Parliament and benefit from that same power, ”he added.

Meanwhile, poverty and inequality are intensified, old social benefit policies are disassembled, influences, nepotism traffic is favored and families of the political elite, institutions and military forces are linked to it and officials at various levels, pointed out Rodríguez Lobaina.

Galindo Buelga considered that while, from time to time, the Cuban population attends the defenestration of a high leader, such a fact is always related to the degree of discomfort he has generated in the highest positions.

“The upper organs practically have no control. The State is uncontrollable, the fight between them (the leaders of the power dome) is the only thing that is more or less controlling. ”

“How do you explain that the children and grandchildren of the senior leaders, who have spent their entire life working for the State, can travel all over the foreigner in private jets, luxurious cars? We see corruption at all levels, ”he said.

Corruption within the Cuban institutions and in the ranks of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) although undeniable, is handled with high degrees of secrecy that try to avoid the dissemination of “distorted behaviors” that far from being isolated made constitute the generality.

The CPI classifies 180 countries and territories according to the level of perception of corruption in the public sector on a zero (very corrupt) scale to one hundred (very «clean»).