Rubio announces further sanctions on Cuban regime, foreign military support

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Thursday additional sanctions on the communist Cuban regime as well as on foreign military support. In a letter, he condemned the rulers of the island nation for hoarding energy, shipping, and technology resources "for its own enrichment, leaving the Cuban people to contend with blackouts, shortages and a stagnant economy."

"The Marxist regime in Havana relies on a web of state-owned enterprises, joint ventures, and offshore intermediaries to keep this system running; its foreign backers supply the military equipment that helps sustain the regime’s military forces and enable its brutal repression, while propping up its persistent efforts to threaten, infiltrate and subvert the American homeland," Rubio said.

As such, and pursuant to Trump's EO on Imposing Sanctions on Those Responsible for Repression in Cuba and for Threats to United States National Security and Foreign Policy, Rubio designated "ten targets including additional Cuban elites, a crude oil shipping network, state-owned import and technical-support entities, and China-based suppliers of the regime’s military forces."

Specifically, those who are facing additional sanctions include Guillermo Faustino Rodriguez Lopez Calleja, who is involved in "an extensive web of offshore shipping companies that move Cuban crude oil shipments to and from the island." Any Rodriguez Lastres, daughter of the Grupo de Administración Empresarial President Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera was also designated for further sanctions.

"The Trump Administration will not stand by while the Cuban regime funnels the island’s resources to its military elite, while regime insiders and their family members profit from opaque offshore networks, and while Cuba continues to serve as a staging ground for a global coalition of hostile anti-American actors to threaten, spy on, and plot against the United States and its interests," Rubio said.