Rubio Offers Cubans $100 Million in Aid, Blames GAESA for Blackouts

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke directly to the Cuban people in a Spanish-language video Wednesday, criticizing the country's elite for corruption and offering a new path that includes $100 million in food and medicine.

Rubio, the son of Cuban parents who immigrated to Florida two years before Fidel Castro took power, singled out Grupo de Administración Empresarial S.A., or GAESA. He said the politically connected business group holds $18 billion in assets and controls 70 percent of the economy.

"They profit from hotels, construction, banks, stores and even from the money your relatives send you from the U.S. Everything, everything passes through their hands," Rubio said. "From those remittances they retain a percentage, but from GAESA's profits nothing reaches you."

Cuba is facing a massive blackout that has left most of the country without power after its already fragile grid failed. The United States has blocked oil shipments to Cuba since January. Cuba had long received oil from Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, who was removed from power by the United States in a military operation that month and later indicted on drug trafficking charges.

"The reason you are forced to survive 22 hours a day without electricity is not due to an oil 'blockade' by the U.S.," Rubio said. "The real reason you don't have electricity, fuel, or food is because those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars, but nothing has been used to help the people."

Rubio said the $100 million in relief supplies, an offer the United States has made before, must be distributed through the Catholic Church or other charities to keep it from being "stolen by GAESA to sell in one of their stores."

"President Trump is offering a new relationship between the U.S. and Cuba," Rubio said. "But it must be directly with you, the Cuban people, not with GAESA."

Rubio also spoke about ending communism, which has governed Cuba for 67 years. "Today in Cuba, only those close to the GAESA elite or who are part of it can have profitable businesses," he said. "But President Trump is offering a new path between the U.S. and a new Cuba. A new Cuba where you, the ordinary Cuban, and not just GAESA, can own a gas station or a clothing store, or a restaurant."

The comments came the same day the 94-year-old Raúl Castro was expected to be indicted by the U.S. government, according to sources familiar with the investigation. The case stems from Cuba's 1996 shoot-down of two small planes operated by the humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue.