Hiding Fidel's Fortune

January 9, 2011


A Wikileak-released cable from the U.S. Embassy in Chile, which profiles losing presidential candidate Marco Enriquez-Ominami, includes the following sidebar:

Max Marambio: The Wealthy and Controversial "Friend of Fidel" Behind Marco's Campaign

(C) In a life studded with celebrities and fascinating characters, Enriquez-Ominami's chief campaign financier and political advisor, leftist revolutionary-turned-millionaire Max Marambio, is the most interesting of all. As a young man, Marambio joined the MIR and led Salvador Allende's presidential bodyguard team. He lived in the Cuban embassy in Santiago for 10 months following the coup, before fleeing first to Switzerland and then to Cuba, where he studied political science at the University of Havana and trained with the Cuban special forces. He participated in secret Cuban military and commercial missions to Angola, Lebanon, Korea, Central America, and Europe, allegedly including a role in hiding Fidel Castro's personal fortune. In the late 1970s, he began a joint venture food company with the Cuban government which eventually became International Network Group, a holding company which generates US $80 million in profits in Cuba each year from food products and tourism.

Marambio has since fallen-out with the Castro brothers, who have essentially begun an international manhunt for him, pursuant to a -- get this -- fraud and corruption probe.

In other words, he was probably skimming from the Castro's cut.

Meanwhile, Marambio's business partner was found dead in a Havana apartment last April.

"Here is the devil - and - all to pay."

-- Miguel de Cervantes, The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605).