WASHINGTON, May 18 (Reuters) – The U.S. government imposed sanctions on nine Cuban officials, including the country’s communications minister and several military leaders, as well as its directorate of intelligence, the U.S. Treasury Department announced on Monday.
The designations are part of a broader push by the Trump administration to increase pressure on Cuba’s communist government, including efforts to curb the flow of oil from Venezuela and Mexico to the island.
The administration has described Cuba’s current communist-run government as corrupt and incompetent and is pushing for a regime change.
President Donald Trump has heaped pressure on the island, effectively imposing a blockade by threatening sanctions on countries supplying it with fuel, igniting power outages and delivering blows to its economy.
Following is a list of some of the most senior officials targeted on Monday:
• Mayra Arevich Marin, a member of the Communist Party Central Committee who has served as minister of communications since April 2021.
• Juan Esteban Lazo Hernandez, president of the Cuban National Assembly and a longtime Communist party official and member of the Politburo.
• Roberto Tomas Morales Ojeda, a senior Communist Party leader, who previously served as minister of public health and vice president.
• Joaquin Quintas Sola, a general in the Cuban Army and vice minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.
• Raul Villar Kessel, a senior Cuban military officer.
• A number of other lower-level figures were also designated.
• Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control also designated the Directorate of Intelligence of Cuba, or DI, which is the main state intelligence service of the Cuban government.
• Trump on May 1 signed an executive order that provides broad authority to designate parties in Cuba’s key economic sectors and authorizes secondary sanctions against foreign financial institutions that deal with sanctioned parties.
• The Trump administration plans to announce criminal charges against former Cuban president Raul Castro on Wednesday, a Justice Department official said last week.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Katharine Jackson , editing by Michelle Nichols and Sanjeev Miglani)
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