US Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz got into a shouting match Tuesday with Cuba’s foreign minister on the floor of the UN’s General Assembly hall while detailing the communist regime’s ill-gotten wealth.
Waltz called out the Havana government for profiting off of the forced labor of its own citizens sent to concentration camps while using confiscated “businesses, farms, factories, homes and the savings of generations of hardworking Cubans” to line the pockets of its leaders.
As Waltz spoke, Cuba’s delegation banged on the table near their seats to express disapproval before Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla charged toward the rostrum and accused Waltz of lying, causing the US envoy to shout: “Back up!”
“He doesn’t like hard truths,” Waltz told the delegates. “You can come and intimidate all you want.”
“He’s not going to intimidate me in the United States of America — like he tries to intimidate political prisoners,” said Waltz, raising his voice at Parrilla as UN officials tried to restore order.
“I know that you don’t like to hear these hard truths, but I am speaking for the Cuban people,” Waltz added. “And ever since 1959, this government in Havana would have you believe that everything in Cuba has just disappeared; that they are the victim; that it’s someone else’s fault.”
A video obtained by The Post showed fellow US diplomat J.P. Freire being assaulted by another member of the Cuban delegation who tried to grab Freire’s iPhone as he was recording the confrontation.
Members of the Cuban delegation were recording their own media as Parrilla approached Waltz mid-speech.
The broadside against “corrupt Cuban elites” at one point featured Waltz displaying a photo of late dictator Fidel Castro wearing two Rolex watches worth around $40,000 in today’s money.
“According to the regime’s own statistics, that would pay for 55 years of an average Cuban wage,” Waltz noted, before showing a photo of Miguel Díaz-Canel and saying, “It didn’t just start with Castro. This is the current Cuban president, also with a Rolex on.”
The former Florida congressman highlighted reports on the Cuban military-run conglomerate GAESA amassing $18 billion in assets that have enriched regime elites, showing further photos of them flaunting their wealth.
“It’s not just watches, colleagues, it’s also a vast real estate empire,” Waltz continued, sharing images of the Castro family’s 14,000-square-foot seaside retreat in Varadero with marble floors, a sauna and a private dock, as well as the ex-ruling family’s compound made “from cedar imported from the Brazilian Amazon rainforest.”
“But colleagues, even 20 homes and all of these lavish compounds aren’t enough,” Waltz added. “Why settle for mansions by the sea when you can have your own private island? That’s right. The Castro family has their own private island, Cayo Piedra.”
The comments came as the UN envoy was urging delegates to vote against a resolution condemning US sanctions on the island.
“Here’s the lie that I ask you to all take a hard look. There is no blockade,” Waltz concluded. “A blockade is a ring of military ships around an island. It doesn’t exist.”
“How did the United States become Cuba’s largest, single largest fuel supplier to its private sector, as small as it is, while Havana tells the world America won’t let fuel in? That’s the lie, Mr. President,” he said.
“So let me conclude from where I begin,” Waltz added. “Things don’t just disappear. An entire country’s wealth doesn’t just vanish and evaporate. Its confiscated property didn’t just go away. Its doctor’s wages didn’t just cease to exist.
“But we now know where it is,” he emphasized. “The billions documented in GAESA’s secret financial accounts that have now been exposed to the world is where it is. That’s where the Cuban people’s wealth is sitting. Their wealth simply changed hands, from their hands as they starve to the elites as they live lives of luxury.”
