U.S. imposes fresh sanctions on Cuba military-linked conglomerate and nickel venture

Washington has tightened the screws on Havana by sanctioning Grupo de Administracion Empresarial S.A., better known as GAESA, its executive president Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, and Moa Nickel SA, a joint venture tied to Cuba’s nickel and cobalt sector. The move, announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio on May 7 and carried out under President Trump’s Executive Order 14404 signed May 1, marks a sharper attempt to hit the military-linked commercial network that sits at the center of Cuba’s economy.

The State Department said GAESA was designated for operating in Cuba’s financial services sector, while Lastres was named for serving as a senior executive officer. MNSA was targeted for operating in the metals and mining sector. The administration said the order broadens sanctions under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and allows secondary sanctions on foreign banks and companies that do business with sanctioned persons or entities, a warning aimed well beyond Cuba itself. Officials also said more designations could follow in the coming days and weeks.

GAESA matters because it is not a narrow holding company. The Cuban military-controlled umbrella enterprise spans banks, hotels, cargo shipping, foreign-currency stores and remittance-related operations, giving it reach across much of the island’s hard-currency economy. U.S. officials estimate GAESA controls 40 percent or more of Cuba’s economy. The State Department said its revenues are likely more than three times Cuba’s state budget and that it may control up to $20 billion in illicit assets. Leaked-document estimates cited in earlier reporting put its assets at about $18 billion in early 2024.

The first economic pressure is likely to land where foreign exchange is tightest: finance, imports, mining and the businesses that depend on military-linked payments and banking channels. MNSA is especially sensitive because nickel and cobalt are among Cuba’s most important export minerals, and the venture mines both. That makes the sanction more than symbolic. It threatens one of the few sectors capable of generating dollars for an economy already starved of fuel, credit and new investment.

Sherritt International, the Toronto-based partner in the venture, said it suspended direct participation in its Cuban joint-venture activities immediately. It is also repatriating expatriate employees from Cuba and has asked partners to do the same in Canada. The company said there is no immediate impact on its Fort Saskatchewan, Alberta refinery, one of only three nickel refineries in North America and the only significant cobalt refinery on the continent, and said available feed should last until about mid-June.

The sanctions fit a broader hardening of U.S. policy toward Cuba this year, alongside moves to stop oil shipments from Venezuela and fresh threats of economic punishment. The White House said the new Cuba order targets entities and affiliates that support the regime’s security apparatus, facilitate transactions for sanctioned persons, or are complicit in corruption and serious human rights abuses. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel called the order coercive, while Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla denounced it as collective punishment and said it had genocidal intent. For Havana, the immediate test is whether Washington can squeeze the military’s commercial empire without pushing even more of the burden onto ordinary Cubans.