From our Bureau of Capitalists Who Keep Communists in Power with some assistance from our Bureau of Morally Bankrupt Cretins
Ever wonder who partners up with Castro, Inc. to sell Cuban cigars around the world? Read the article below to find out. These despicable and morally bankrupt money grubbers prove that Lenin was correct in saying “Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.’
Obviously, none of these Europeans fear being hung by Castro, Inc. because they know how useful their services are to that puny totalitarian dictatorship. But that makes their dirty business all the more immoral. They know that those who produce Cuba’s cigars are enslaved and receive zero profits from their labor, but they couldn’t care less. To them, Cubans might as well be subhuman.
I will never forget the rage I felt in 2009 when I entered into a cigar store in Geneva, Switzerland and saw that the oak-panelled walls were festooned with black-and white photographs of Cuban tobacco farmers and cigar rollers who get paid a pittance by Castro, Inc.. Then I saw the super-expensive Che cigar box and matching ashtray on display. The horror that surrounded me at that store prompted me to write one of my first pieces for Babalu. You can read it HERE after you’ve read the post below.
From 14yMedio via Translating Cuba
Escorted by two British red coats and surrounded by millionaires from all over the world, the managers of the Hunters & Frankau house had some news: last month during the cigar auction to promote the Trinidad Cabildos, whose organization had been invited by the Havana regime, 5,150,000 euros were collected in a single night. The president of the cigar company, Jemma Freeman, promised to send the money – most would be missing – to the dilapidated “Cuban Public Health system.”
Hunters & Frankau, the exclusive distributor of the Cuban monopoly Habanos S.A. in the United Kingdom, thus closed the first face-to-face edition of World Cigar Days. Similar – but much more luxurious – at the Cigar Festival of Cuba, the event was hosted by the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Between Rafael’s Renaissance canvases and a humidor signed by Fidel Castro in 2002 – which was not for sale – the aficionados bid on limited editions and numbered boxes of Trinidad, a brand that turns 55 and is “loaded with symbolism” for being the favorite of the Cuban dictator.
It is enough to explore the official website of Habanos S.A. to verify that premium cigars continue to give great benefits to the regime. The news section attests to the luxurious network of Cuban cigars internationally and its distribution partners. From Russia to Beirut, from Madrid to Geneva, from Havana to Qatar, the “friends of the cigar” network has been consolidating its power with millionaire sales for decades. A Cuban tobacco planter would need a lot of mental effort to process that a single cigar made by his hands is auctioned for thousands of dollars in the great capitals of the world.
Habanos S.A. would be nothing without Spain. The ethnologist Fernando Ortiz wrote that whoever rules in Cuba rules over the cigar. That phrase is illustrated like no one else by Luis Sánchez-Harguindey, co-president of the monopoly since 2012, although on his social networks he describes himself simply as a president and an expert in “international business management.”
It is Sánchez-Harguindey who calls the shots for Habanos S.A. and who presents his results annually during the Cuban Cigar Festival. His counterpart in Spain is Fernando Domínguez, president of Tabacalera S.A., which distributes Cuban cigars to every tobacconist in Spain. Sánchez-Harguindey and Domínguez’s dream was to take the American market by storm, but Cuban cigars were banished. In 2015, in the midst of the thaw in diplomatic relations between Havana and Washington, both businessmen salivated over a commercial opportunity that never came.
Habanos S.A. soon recovered from its disappointment and strengthened its sales in Europe. The key man of that expansion was Heinrich Villiger, director of 5th Avenue Products Trading, who is in charge of the distribution of Cuban cigars in Germany, Austria and Poland.
At the age of 94, Villiger, a member of one of the most prominent families in Switzerland – his brother Kaspar was president of the country – opened factories in Nicaragua and Brazil this year. He boasts of directing his “empire” – he employs 1,700 people – based on letters that come out of his typewriter. As a young man, Villiger traveled to the United States and then to Cuba, Santo Domingo and Puerto Rico to gain experience. When the Cuban cigar business collapsed in the United States after the Missile Crisis – before which, supposedly, President J.F. Kennedy bought all the cigars available – Villiger took the opportunity and approached Castro.
One of the least known sales niches of Habanos S.A. in Europe is Andorra. One company – Maori Tabacs – takes advantage of the tax exemptions offered by that country, advertises as a paradise for “luxury hunters.” José María Cases and his son Ricardo, who preside over Maori, know it well. Cases is famous for initiating the practice of wrapping cigars in cellophane so that, in the absence of tropical humidity, they survive the European climate.
Continue reading HERE
At least these dirtbags are openly out to make money, as opposed to worse dirtbags who presume to be enabling Castro, Inc. out of much loftier reasons. But yes, it still reeks.
Those “guards” or “soldiers” look like something out of Monty Python. Ridiculous.