Even as Cubans have been dying because of shortages of medicines and supplies at hospitals, and the government claims it doesn’t have the money to buy them due to U.S. sanctions, companies run by Cuba’s military have stashed away billions of dollars, according to financial records obtained by the Miami Herald. Gaviota, a company that runs tourist hotels and is just one of many owned by the military, is sitting on about $4.3 billion in its bank accounts, the documents show. That’s almost 13 times the $339 million the government said it needed to buy medications to supply Cuban pharmacies annually. The country’s healthcare system lacks 70% percent of the essential medications to treat most illnesses, Cuba’s prime minister said earlier this month. As the country has plunged into its most profound crisis since the end of the Soviet Union’s subsidies in the 1990s, a multi-headed conglomerate known as GAESA, owned by the Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces, has been holding on to hundreds of millions of dollars that enter the island yearly — and using it in ways that have dramatically worsened the lives of Cubans and increased the country’s debt. For the first time, a rare leak of GAESA’s internal financial records reveals how much the military has diverted the country’s badly needed hard currency to its enterprises. GAESA keeps this financial information secret and even guards its accounts from government comptrollers, making what the documents reveal even more significant.

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