Havana – Cuban leader Fidel Castro rejected a report by Forbes magazine that he is nearly a billionaire, and dared Washington and the CIA to prove that such a fortune exists.
“I challenge them to prove what they have said in here,” Castro said, holding a copy of Forbes during an appearance Monday night on state television.
The latest issue of Forbes reported that Castro has foreign bank accounts and a personal fortune of $900 million, placing him in 7th place on the magazine’s annual list of “Kings, Queens & Dictators.”
“If they prove that I have an account abroad of $900 million or of one dollar, I’ll resign right now from all the duties I am performing,” Castro said.
The leader, who has run the country uninterruptedly since 1959, was accompanied during his television appearance by, among others, Central Bank chief Francisco Soberon, Culture Minister Abel Prieto and the historian of the city of Havana, Eusebio Leal, who debunked the Forbes article from several angles.
During the program, Castro called the magazine’s story “libelous” and its editor a “bandit,” adding that the information on his purported fortune was “trash” and a “slander” orchestrated by U.S. President George W. Bush and American intelligence agencies to discredit him and the Cuban Revolution.
Castro questioned why he would want such a sum of money now that he was about to turn 80, if he did not want it when he was younger.
Soberon, for his part, said the model used by Forbes to estimate Castro’s fortune was “crude and ridiculous.”
The Central Bank chief said that in the centralized Cuban economy, it was “totally impossible” for a leader to have personal accounts abroad, and even less so “an irreproachable leader” like Castro.
Forbes said it came up with its figure after determining that Castro “has economic control over a web of state-owned companies.” The magazine claimed that some or much of the profits from those firms go to the aging head of state.
Last year, Forbes estimated the Cuban president’s personal fortune at $550 million, leading Castro to threaten a legal response to the “infamy.”
“Do they think I am Mobutu (Sese Seko, the late kleptocrat ruler of Zaire/Congo) or one of the many millionaires, those thieves, looters whom the empire has shielded and protected,” Castro said last year, alluding to strongmen aligned with the United States.
The 79-year-old Castro, who led the revolution that overthrew U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista, has ruled Cuba since 1959.
