Cuban democracy funds wasted

[mawilson 2,133]

Cuban dissidents who were given millions of dollars by the US government

to support democracy in their homeland instead blew money on computer

games, cashmere sweaters, crabmeat and expensive chocolates, which were

then sent to the island.

A scathing congressional audit of democracy-assistance programmes found

“questionable expenditure” by several groups funded by Washington in

opposition to President Fidel Castro’s rule on the communist Caribbean island.

The Miami-based Acción Democrática Cubana spent money on a chainsaw,

Nintendo Game Boys and Sony PlayStations, mountain bikes, leather coats

and Godiva chocolates, which the group says were all sent to Cuba. “These

people are going hungry. They never get any chocolate there,” Juan Carlos

Acosta, the group’s executive director, told the Miami Herald.

He also defended the purchase of a chainsaw he said he needed to cut a tree

that had blocked access to his office in a hurricane, and said that the leather

jackets and cashmere sweaters were bought in a sale. “They [the auditors]

think it’s not cold there,” Mr Acosta said. “At $30 [£16] it’s a bargain because

cashmere is expensive. They were asking for sweaters.”

The audit analysed $65m of spending by the US Agency for International

Development (USAID) from 1996 to 2005 and concluded that poor management

was to blame for the waste. “There were weaknesses in agency policies and in

programme office oversight, and internal control deficiencies,” the report states.

None of the 36 groups that received money were identified in the report, but

others admitted to the Miami Herald in advance of its publication today that they

had been investigated.

Frank Hernandez Trujillo, executive director of Grupo De Apoyo a la Democracia

(Group for the Support of Democracy), said his organisation received more than

$7m from USAID, a programme that has formed a central piece of President

George Bush’s policy on Cuba.

“I’ll defend that until I die,” Mr Hernandez Trujillo said of his decision to spend part

of his group’s allocation on boxes of computer games. “That’s part of our job, to

show the people in Cuba what they could attain if they were not under that system.”

Most of the items were distributed to dissidents in Cuba by US diplomats in Havana,

who were sometimes unaware what was in the shipments.

David Snider, a spokesman for USAID, said he was awaiting a final copy of the

report, but admitted that an investigation was under way into three cases highlighted

by the audit.

The US government has previously accused the Cuban government of hijacking

consignments sent to its Havana mission.

Source

[Ban Hammer 13,342]

right on par with the katrina people buying designer purses, lap dances, and a ####### job.

[almaty 19]

####### jobs is money well spent...

[Ban Hammer 13,342]

####### jobs is money well spent...

hopefully it was a woman that did that...........

[almaty 19]

####### jobs is money well spent...

hopefully it was a woman that did that...........

good point, afterall, it was new orleans