LatinNews Daily Report - 27 March 2013

ECONOMY | New anti-corruption agency. The Cuban council of State led by President Raúl Castro has set up a new anti-corruption institute known as the State commission for control (Comisión Estatal de Control [CEC]), which will function at the national and provincial level and will be tasked with eliminating “administrative corruption”, according to a decree (dated 14 March 2013) published in the daily gazette on Monday (25 March). The CEC will be headed up by the current (and Cuba’s first ever) comptroller general, Gladys Bejerano, now also a vice-president on the council of State. She will nominate a new deputy comptroller general to assist her. The CEC also comprises Lina Olinda Pedraza (the minister of finance & prices) and María Esther Reus (justice); along with representatives of the prosecutor general’s office, the interior ministry, the army, the economy & planning ministry, the foreign ministry, the external trade & foreign investment ministry, the labour ministry, the central bank, the national statistics office and the customs office, according to the decree. The CEC effectively substitutes a governmental commission set up by President Castro in July 2008 to advise the cabinet on official corruption, which has become a real bugbear of Castro’s as he oversees a process to slim down Cuba’s bloated and inefficient communist State. “Control is part of work and not an additional task”, the State daily, Granma, intoned on Monday.

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