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 Travel & Outdoors | The Cuba Connection | March 2005 
Cuban Diplomats Angered by Forbes Estimate of Castro's Wealth
 Associated Press
| Castro during '98 visit with Pope Paul.
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Mexico City - Most people would be flattered if Forbes magazine estimated their personal fortune at US $550 million (euro 410 million) - but Cuban President Fidel Castro is not, apparently, one of them.
Cuba's embassy in Mexico issued a stinging rebuke on Wednesday of the Forbes article without mentioning the magazine by name, calling it "a repugnant example of a campaign of lies" by "an American magazine of decaying credibility."
"It is a clumsy slander and a repugnant example of a campaign of lies perpetrated in the United States with the sole aim of justifying the criminal blockade of Cuba," the embassy said in a press statement.
Embassy officials could not immediately explain why the statement was released in Mexico, rather than in Havana, the Cuban capital.
In a story published Thursday about the fortunes of rulers and heads-of-state, Forbes estimated the communist leader's net worth at US $550 million, but acknowledged "these estimates are more art than science."
"In the past, we have relied on a percentage of Cuba's gross domestic product to estimate Fidel Castro's fortune," the article stated.
"This year we have used more traditional valuation methods, comparing state-owned assets Castro is assumed to control with comparable publicly traded companies."
The magazine said Castro "derives his fortune from a web of state-owned businesses," including a convention center and retail and pharmaceutical businesses.
The embassy denied that, saying "income from Cuban state-owned companies are used exclusively for the benefit of the people, to whom they belong."
While the embassy did not dispute Forbes' estimate that Castro "travels exclusively in a convoy of black Mercedes-Benzes," it claimed Cuba was the only country in Latin America to fight inequality. |
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