[Witness spoke in Spanish, interpreted as follows:]
For those who may not know, GAESA is the military business that controls 60% of the economy and almost 90% of the finances for all of Cuba. It's a business conglomerate that is directly controlled by the armed forces and by the Castro family. In 2024, its financial statements showed that they had up to $18.5 billion in cash reserves. That reserve is sufficient to solve a great number of the difficulties Cuba is experiencing right now in the humanitarian crisis. It definitively shows that the priorities of the regime have not been the well-being of the Cuban people.
The other thing it shows is that there have been a number of initiatives to provide humanitarian aid to Cuba over the years. Most of them have been resold to the population. It happened with mattresses. We heard reports that free mattresses arrived in the country, but people had to buy them using hard currency. We know that there are things coming from Europe as well. They're sent to rural areas. They're saying that they're receiving that humanitarian aid, but they have to pay for it. We have very clear evidence and proof. We see hundreds of hotels where there are all kinds of vacancies, yet money is not getting invested elsewhere. A lot of countries, such as Canada, send tourists to Cuba, and the regime keeps building more and more hotels. Why? For whom? Those hotels rooms are empty. The regime should build hospitals and schools.
When we say that the regime is the structural cause of the crisis in Cuba, it's because if the regime really wanted to take care of people, it could have used the resources it has had over these almost 70 years. We have seen that this is not in the interest of the regime. As my colleague was saying, the regime wants people who are hungry so that it can control them.