Smugglers' Nest Is Dismantled in Güines

By José Izquierdo, Biblioteca Cívica “Sebastián Arcos” ("Sebastian Arcos" Civic Library)

Güines, February 19, 2003 (www.cubanet.org) - Combined forces of the National Police and Technical Investigation Department (DTI, as per its Spanish initials), dismantled in Güines, a town located in Havana Province, a net of smugglers of food products and alcoholic beverages in more than a dozen establishments belonging to the gastronomic enterprise of this Municipality.

According to sources close to the local police, 19 cafeteria Administrators, together with a highly placed leader of the municipal gastronomic enterprise are under arrest since last February 8, when they were discovered in a lucrative business of selling eggs, rum and bottled beer in the black or subterranean market, a fact that shook the high circles of Government and the Communist Party in Havana Province.

Pedro Sáenz Montejo, First Secretary of the Communist Party in Havana, in a special meeting held last week in Güines, requested the application of severe criminal sanctions against those involved in the smuggling, referring to them as “real vultures of the national economy.”

Among those arrested there is Mr. Ramón Aramillo, Vice-Director in charge of the gastronomic activity in Güines' Trade and Gastronomic Enterprise.

Aramillo together with other 19 persons are part of an extensive smuggling operation discovered at the beginning of this month, when police forces held up outside Güines a metal container full of chicken eggs. Besides, they seized in several gastronomic units, an undetermined amount of beer cases and rum bottles, all of them illegally obtained.