MIAMI. -Boris Arencibia, a 50-year-old Cuban who came out of exile in 2023 during the controversial Santa María Music Fest, held at the hotel facilities of the ‘Revolutionary Armed Forces’, was arrested at his home in Miami-Dade. A federal police investigation points to him as an alleged member of a multimillion-dollar fraud related to psychiatric, cancer and HIV medications.
Arencibia, who presents himself on the social network Facebook as a man from Pinar del Río who studied in Cerro Pelado and works at Caribe Promotions, is actually the owner and president of that company based in South Florida and would be facing a total of 18 federal charges, including conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to supply adulterated and false brand drugs, conspiracy to traffic in medical products with false documentation.
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the Cuban, who could face up to 40 years in prison if found guilty, is in FDC Miami (33 NE 4TH STREET), a federal administrative security detention center where more than 900 detained.
Through the ‘criminal sheet’ filed in the Southern District of Florida, Arencibia is accused of having conspired with around a dozen people between 2013 and 2019 to buy expensive prescription medications from people who obtained them through robbery, theft or fraud. in medical care. One of the people with whom he is linked is the also Cuban Lázaro Hernández, arrested since 2022, after being accused of directing the plot of about $230 million.
According to the indictment, Arencibia would have used two corporations – Quality Supplement Distributors and LDD Distributors Inc., which he registered in Connecticut under another person’s name – to launder around $400,000.
It is this subject, who is also named as a material witness in a lawsuit for similar reasons filed in 2021 in the Eastern District of New York and who as early as 2000 was accused of possessing equipment that could create fraudulent credit cards, whom the Havana regime allowed to organize an event like the Santa Maria Music Fest.
A whirlwind festival
Cancellations by artists who had been announced marked the Santa Maria Music Fest, after Cuban citizens took to social media to denounce the high prices of concert tickets, as well as accommodation packages in hotels financially controlled by the conglomerate. business of the regime’s armed forces.
In that context, Arencibia acknowledged being in charge of organizing the festival. Interviewed by Juan Manuel Cao on the program A Fondo, the director of Yucabyte magazine, Norges Rodríguez, said about the Arencibia case that “the regime associates with whoever it has to associate with to achieve its objectives,” and concluded: “it is not a government, but a criminal organization in power with an embassy in Washington and a seat in the United Nations.”
Rodríguez emphasized that, in a different scenario, the Cuban regime intends to repeat the thaw or rapprochement between Cuba and the United States during the Obama administration. If at that stage cultural exchange or ‘people to people’ took place on an institutional scale, now, however, they are betting on human ‘bridges’ through individuals.
The defense
In addition to the defense attorney, Frank Quintero, who claims that his client—under federal investigation for approximately a year—“offered to turn himself in, but was never given the opportunity to do so,” Arencibia has had other defenders in the artistic sector.
One of them is the interpreter of How I Pay You, Lenier Mesa, who was also involved in a strong controversy for his trip to Cuba during the days of the Cayo Santa María festival.
“Boris has always been a friend of all these Cuban artists and all these people from Miami. Since Boris has always had his money, everyone took him with him, now that all this has happened to him, where are all those people, because there are a bunch that you know are friends of Boris. “Where are they?” said the singer-songwriter and insisted that “when you have a friendship with a person and that person is whatever, you don’t care about that, your friendships are your friendships, and you have to respect that.”
Along these lines, the Cuban reggaeton player José Manuel Carbajal, known as El Taiger, declared in a post: “I see everyone talking about Boris and what happened to him, I see no one saying what is needed from a man who I always saw him give Without expecting anything in return”. Yomil Hidalgo also went back to his beginnings in music when, he says, Arencibia extended his hand to him.
another demand
However, detractors emerge in the artistic environment itself. In an interview with Univisión, interpreter Ramon Lavado, alias El Chacal, gave details of a lawsuit filed against Boris Arencibia and La Corporation; This is a legal process started in November 2022 to separate from that agency. The legal representative said that the investigation against the company would find “theft, fraud, and at least one signature that has been forged.”
Likewise, some comments on networks paid attention to the fact that “it is the FBI” that is investigating Arencibia and not for a minor case but for “adulterated medications for people with cancer.”
