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GAOGATE
And where are the millions?
BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD —Special for Granma
International—
ADOLFO
Franco, the official who administrates the Latin
American funds for USAID on behalf of the godfathers
of the Cuban-American mafia, has managed to almost
completely conceal the whereabouts of $65.4 million
donated by this federal fund throughout the last
decade.
This is
revealed, in exceptionally bureaucratic terms, in
the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)
report. However, this document avoids asking clearly
the essential question: Where did all those millions
that “disappeared” go?
On reading
the 50-page report in detail, we discover a number
of pieces of information, often hidden away beneath
a heavy cloak of rhetoric, that reveals the
existence of a veritable network of fraud which, far
beyond the small-time con artists who have the face
to justify their chocolate purchases, has to extend
itself much higher, where lie those who conceived
this ingenious system for the distribution of dollar
bills.
First
revelation from this study into the accounts: more
than 95%, that is to say, almost the entire total of
the $65.4 million – we’re not talking cents here –
were attributed to “a response to unsolicited
proposals.” In short, they were given away without
tender.
Worse, much
worse still. USAID modified more than two-thirds of
its 40 contracts, raising the estimated costs of
these programs eightfold – from $6 million to $50
million – and extending completion dates by an
average of three years, explains the text.
That is to
say that their buddies – who else would present
“unsolicited proposals”? — did not just have to not
face public competition but had their monetary
subsidies increased and contracts prolonged without
asking for it.
USAID does
indeed demand that those contracted demonstrate
their real capacity to undertake their tasks and has
anticipated a way to detect con artists. But, in the
case of Cuba, things are apparently very different.
According to the GAO, in four out of eight
beneficiaries revised, the information reclaimed was
handed over after the subsidy had been handed over.
The
necessary audits, of course, are carried out using
the same technique: the report shows a case in which
they only found certain “paid invoices and bank
statements”.
So
professional are Franco’s officials that they had to
confess to the GAO that all the contracts are the
work of a “document generating software program”
that churns out the usual blah-blah-blah.
At the end
of the day, we’re only talking about millions of
dollars.
The GAO can
do nothing else but observe that USAID, the imposing
federal agency that throws millions of dollars
around the planet, has NO formal procedure for
monitoring its grantees who, of course, do not
complain about this omission. USAID only asks for “a
one-page financial report” every three months.
As for the
visits by USAID officials to those whom it’s
fattening up, the report reveals that they are only
minutes long and take place on the gentle whims of
Adolfo who, evidently, hates to disturb his clients.
After all, they are personal friends in many cases.
The list of
vicissitudes of the United States Agency for
International Development, as described in the GAO
report, are extended in this way and diplomatically
concluded: “In the context of recent recommendations
to increase funding for democracy assistance in
Cuba, we conclude that the U.S. government’s efforts
to support democratic political change face several
significant challenges.” Names will never hurt me,
as the saying goes.
THEY DID
NOT MELT AWAY ON CHOCOLATE ALONE
What is
filtering through from various channels in Miami is
that amongst the overweight members of the mafioso
nomenclature responsible for the disappearance of
millions of dollars, we find:
• THE ICCAS
at the University of Miami and former CIA analyst
Jaime Suchlicki, the privileged son of the Bacardi
family who joyfully took away $7 million.
• The
Democracy Support Group run by Frank Hernández
Trujillo, a former member of the Special Cuban Units
of the U.S. Army, who is responsible for laundering
more than $6 million.
• The Center
for a Free Cuba run by veteran CIA agent Frank
Calzón, former mercenary with Alpha 66 and Abdala,
who picked up more than $5 million.
• The Cuban
Democratic Directorate of Orlando Gutierrez Boronat,
former member of the Cuban Liberation Organization
with $3 million.
The list
then continues with friends that Franco, generously,
lubricates with the money that he has to burn.
• The
Creighton University Law School, from which he
graduated several decades ago, received $750,000 for
a fantasy study into the devolution of properties in
Cuba.
• The
Mississippi Consortium for International Development
(MCID) where Franco’s buddy, playboy Ramón Colas,
appeared – after having had his little problem with
CANF – also received, rather opportunely, a similar
donation to organize “courses” in Cuba. Professional
dissident Oswaldo Paya ended up with a salary of
$1,000 for his collaboration, alms that were given
away at the end of a series of eight courses.
• At the end
of the list appear certain “activists” as notorious
as Juan Carlos Acosta, self-titled “President of
Cuban Democratic Action” who served as a scapegoat
over his purchase — which he confessed to The
Miami Herald — of a box of English Godiva
chocolates at $35 per pound and several other odd
items.
But the
$65.4 million of Cuban-American magician Adolfo
Franco was not wasted on trash.
Between 1996
and 2005, according to a graph in the report, 12
alleged NGO’s “with a regional or worldwide focus”
received some $20 million which went towards their
respective propaganda markets.
It is not
just for fun that Robert Ménard, the megalomaniac
owner of Reporters Sans Frontières, has an office in
New York, an accountancy firm in Virginia, just
minutes away from the CIA bunker, and a bank account
to which only he has access. The NGO People in Need,
also famous for its anti-Cuba campaigns, has a
similar stratagem at its disposal.
To round off
this Abramoff-style con, USAID fires bills into the
account of the National Endowment for Democracy
(NED) and the International Republican Institute (IRI)
which does indeed have paper shredders when it comes
to facing the law concerning access to information.
Regarding
the supreme refinement of Franco’s method, the GAO
report is surprising when we observe that USAID has
no formal ties, as was expected, with the U.S.
Interests Section (USIS), the supposed diplomatic
representation of the USA in Havana. In this way,
Bush’s 50 agents in Cuba remain perfectly
misinformed about the flow of money that travels
from Washington to Miami, often back and forth.
ONE PHOTO
IS WORTH A THOUSANDS WORDS
A photo
published on the USAID website in March 2005 shows
Franco presenting $1.045 million to his buddy Jaime
Suchlicki from the University of Miami for a project
on a “transition” in Cuba that nobody had heard of
until then. At his side, with his Colgate smile,
which conforms to his commercial image, Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen, Suchlicki and Luis Glaser, an official
from the institution.
After
reading the GAO report, Ana Menéndez, a columnist at
The Miami Herald commented: “Anybody
with a brain has long suspected these anti-Castro
schemes are little more than slush funds to reward
the loyal and pacify the rabid.”
That may
well be. But “anyone with a brain” would also
suspect Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and her twin congress
members, brothers Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart, new
Senator Mel Martinez, Otto Reich and Roger Noriega,
the former tenors of anti-Castroism in the State
Department, as well as the personnel at the Cuban
Liberty Council, who in a growing frenzy, are
demanding funds from their allies in the White
House, all of them wanting their little piece of the
manna from Heaven that they themselves have
generated.
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