A US Congressional report released on Wednesday showed that US funds that were targeted to promote democracy in Cuba have been used to buy items like crabmeat, computer games, chocolate, and cashmere sweaters.
Reuters reports that the Government Accounting Office found little oversight and accountablility in the program, which spent "$76 million between 1996 and 2005 to support Cuban dissidents, independent journalists, academics and others." It also found that 95 percent of the grants were issued without competitive bids.
Critics have long charged the grants are aimed more at winning votes in Miami than triggering political change on the communist island, where the now-ailing Castro has ruled since his 1959 revolution. Out of 10 recipients of public money reviewed by the auditors, three failed to keep adequate financial records, the Government Accountability Office said. A lot of the money was used to pay smugglers, or "mules, to avoid US restrictions on taking goods to Cuba.
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The auditors questioned checks written out to staff members of groups that received funds, suspect travel expenses, and payments to a manager's family. One group acknowledged selling books it was supposed to distribute under the democracy-promoting program. One grantee "could not justify some purchases made with USAID funds, including a gas chain saw, computer gaming equipment and software (including Nintendo Game Boys and Sony PlayStations), a mountain bike, leather coats, cashmere sweaters, crab meat and Godiva chocolates," the report said.
Under the program, no money is paid directly to people in Cuba in order to protect them from prosecution by the Cuba government. Instead the funds are given to Cuban-American groups in Miami who pay smugglers to take the goods, such as medicine, books, and radios, into Cuba.
The Associated Press reports that Rep. William Delahunt (D) of Massachusetts, a longtime critic of US policy towards Cuba and one of the Congressmen who asked for the audit to be done, said the findings are "disturbing to say the least." Delahunt argues that it would be more efficient to get goods to Cuba by lifting government restrictions on family travel to Cuba. "This really cries for a more thorough review of policy as opposed to just simply focusing on the findings and looking at it as an auditing problem."
His view was supported by Rep. Jeff Flake (R) of Arizona, another adovocate of change in the US policy on Cuba. Mr. Flake said the audit's findings showed that to continue the current level of funding "would be a tremendous waste of taxpayer dollars."
The Miami Herald reports that Mr. Delahunt, who is in line to become the chairman of the Oversight and Investigations panel of the House Committee on International Relations when Congress reconvenes next year, said he understood that it was difficult to get materials that promote democracy into Cuba.
"But our concern is the program's efficacy," he said, "in terms of what is occurring here in the United States, both in Washington and in Miami."
Delahunt told a news conference Wednesday that he expected his subcommittee to convene hearings as soon as January and hoped to get testimony from US government officials as well as grant recipients.
Defenders of the program, however, said that the report may help improve the quality of the program.
"From what I understand, the report does not question our goal and overall policy to bring freedom and democracy to Cuba," said Miami Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. "In fact, based on what I know of the report, I would argue it seeks to reinforce our efforts by providing recommendations on how to improve the process."
The Guardian reports that the Miami-based Acción Democrática Cubana, which spent the money on the items like computer games and chocolates, defended their actions.
"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 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."
But the Chicago Tribune reported other critics questioned the efficacy of the program.
"The program delivers lots of money to Miami but it doesn't serve the taxpayer well and it has little impact in Cuba," said Philip Peters, a Cuba expert at the Lexington Institute, a Virginia-based think tank.
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