Blanquist
11th May 2012, 03:13
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/05/09/148330/stasi-records-show-cuba-deal-included.html#storylink=misearch
STASI records show Cuba deal included IKEA furniture, antiques, rum and guns
MIAMI — The controversial contract to use Cuban prison labor to build IKEA furniture was part of a broader deal between companies run by the Cuban and East German security services that also involved Cuban antiques, cigars and guns, according to a researcher in Berlin.
Documents on the deal, found in the archives of East Germany's notorious STASI security agency, also refer to Cuban prison labor and indicate that former Cuban leader Fidel Castro personally approved the overall deal, said researcher Jorge Luis Garcia.
Garcia told El Nuevo Herald on Wednesday that he published an article about the deal in 2006 that mentioned the Cuban manufacture of furniture "for export to Sweden," and posted a note about it in his blog, STASI-MININT Connection, early last year.
The deal blossomed into scandal last week after a German newspaper reported that an IKEA subsidiary in Berlin and an East German company had contracted for Cuban prison labor to build 45,000 tables and 4,000 sofa groupings in 1987.
The Berlin Wall fell two years later and East Germany - officially the German Democratic Republic - was incorporated in 1990 into what previously had been known as West Germany.
It remains unclear how much of the 1987 deal was carried out, said the Cuban-born Garcia, who was interrogated in the STASI's underground cells in East Berlin in 1987. He now guides tours of the cells and researches the agency's archives.
It was also unclear if prison labor was used to make Cuban products that were not part of the IKEA contract.
One document Garcia found in the archives shows the East German companies involved in the deal were Delta GmbH and Art and Antiquities, known as KuA, both controlled by the Interior Ministry, in charge of domestic security.
The STASI, which monitored and repressed domestic dissent, was a much feared part of the ministry.
But the companies were officially branches of the government's foreign trading agency, Kommerzielle Koordinierung.
The agency was led by the notorious wheeler-dealer Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski, a STASI officer who defected in 1989.
The document shows that the Havana side of the deal was EMIAT, and described the company as owned by Cuba's Interior Ministry, or MININT.
Like its East German counterpart, MININT is in charge of domestic security and runs Cuba's prisons as well as the General Directory of State Security, which monitors and cracks down on dissidents.
Garcia said the German-language document shows that three officials of KuA and Delta visited Cuba and met with MININT and EMIAT officials Sept. 17-26, 1987 to discuss a broad array of deals.
"There were visits to production centers. In part, those centers are in penitentiary establishments of the MININT," Garcia quoted the document as saying. "EMIAT wants to increase the use of those installations for the manufacture of products for export."
The same document reported that Cuban Foreign Commerce Minister Ricardo Cabrisas had met with the East German visitors and told them, "This cooperation has been authorized by Companero Fidel Castro."
Garcia added that the document also reported that EMIAT "supplies the guest houses of the government and the Central Committee" of the Cuban Communist Party. "It is also a commercial branch of the MININT."
A separate document, in Spanish and dated Sept. 26, 1987, is a memorandum of understanding that lists all the agreements reached by the East German visitors and their Cuban hosts, but does not give all the details of all the deals.
Another document notes that the agreements included a deal on the production of "furniture for IKEA" with a total value of 12 million German marks. But it does not specifically mention prison labor.
It appears from the memo that Delta acted on behalf of the Swedish furniture and housewares chain.
Also mentioned in the memo are deals on textiles as well as 10,000 tons of grapefruit juice valued at 4.5 million marks, 200,000 bottles of rum and 200,000 cigars - all three products highly coveted in East Germany because of their "tropical" image.
KuA also ordered three containers of "antique furniture," the memo added. Castro's government seized tens of thousands of valuable antiques, paintings and sculptures as wealthy families fled abroad in the early years of the revolution and had to leave their property there.
The Cuban partners also asked for KuA help in exporting to the non-communist world what the document called "oldtimers" - the antique U.S.-made cars and trucks still seen in Cuban streets to this day. "400 oldtimers are ready for export," the document said.
Also mentioned in the memo were sales to East Germany of Cuban shellfish, coffee, precious metals and even coffins, Garcia said by telephone from Berlin. He also provided digital copies of some of the documents.
But there was no indication of which agreements were turned into legal contracts, or which contracts were actually carried out.
Cuba's economy went into a tailspin in the late 1980s as Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev began cutting subsidies to the island.
Other documents published in Germany last week showed that the initial batch of IKEA sofas produced in Cuba had quality problems, and that a group of Delta officials had to travel to the island to remedy the situation. There was no indication of what happened.
The memorandum of understanding was signed by three representatives of Delta and KuA as well as EMIAT chief Lt. Col. Enrique Sanchez, the first secretary at the Cuban embassy to East Germany and Gen. Santiago Borges. Garcia said other STASI documents show Borges ran MININT logistics.
Garca said another document in the STASI archives, reporting on the East Germans' trip to Cuba, showed Havana authorities were so happy that they made KuA president Axel Hilpert an honorary MININT colonel and upgraded his flight home to first class.
After he returned to East Berlin, Hilpert brokered the sale of 2,200 U.S.-made Colt pistols in Cuban stockpiles - apparently left over from pre-Castro days - to a Los Angeles weapons dealer, according to the document quoted by Garcia.
Hilpert, a longtime STASI agent code-named "Monika," became wealthy after the collapse of East Germany, telling reporters that he had made profitable contacts with Western business people during his years at Kommerzielle Koordinierung.
He was investigated in the 1990s in a case involving forged Cuban mail stamps and the mishandling of some funds during the final days of East Germany, and is now jailed while under investigation on other complaints.
But he is still the co-owner of record of the four-star Resort Schwielowsee in the former East Germany, which hosted a 2007 gathering of G-8 finance ministers. A single room at the lakeside resort near Berlin goes for about $160 a night.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/05/08/148178/cuban-american-lawmakers-want.html
MIAMI — The six Cuban-Americans in the Congress on Tuesday demanded "an urgent meeting" with the head of IKEA in North America to discuss whether the company used Cuban prison labor to make some of its furniture in the 1980s.
"It is the responsibility of every company to ensure that its products and their respective components are derived from responsible labor practices," the two senators and four House members wrote in a letter to Mike Ward, head of Ikea North America.
"They certainly should not derive from the dark prisons of authoritarian regimes that repress their own populations, including the denial of basic workers' rights."
It was signed by Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Bob Menendez, D-N.J., as well as South Florida Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart and David Rivera and New Jersey Democrat Albio Sires.
"We want to know the exact circumstances that led Ikea to apparently enter into an accord with the Castro dictatorship to produce some of its furniture in Cuba," said a statement issued by Ros-Lehtinen's office.
"These are serious allegations and they have caused much consternation in our communities, and rightly so," the statement added.
"The Castro brothers have misgoverned Cuba for more than half a century putting in place a tyrannical regime that harasses, beats, jails, exiles and kills anyone who stands in their way.
"Multinational corporations have a moral obligation to assure their businesses are not violating human rights."
The four-paragraph letter was sent to Ward at Ikea North America's headquarters in Conshohocken, Pa.
Spokeswoman Mona Liss said a senior official at Ikea headquarters in Sweden will meet with the Congress members "very quickly."
The authoritative German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported last week that Ikea had contracted for Cuban prisoners to build 45,000 tables and 4,000 sofa groupings in September of 1987.
German reporters found the information while reviewing archives of the former East Germany because officials of its communist government had facilitated the deal with Cuba. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and East Germany ceased to exist the next year.
Ikea already has been investigating reports last fall that some of its buyers had signed deals to have prisoners in East Germany build furniture for the company in the 1970s and 1980s.
Liss told El Nuevo Herald in an email last week that Ikea would now widen that probe to include the Cuba allegations.
"We take these allegations very seriously," she said.
The German newspaper reported that documents found in East German archives showed that officials of that government had signed a deal with a Cuban man identified as Lt. Enrique Sanchez, in charge of EMIAT, a Cuban government enterprise that used prison labor to manufacture furniture.
Liss acknowledged last week that Ikea had agreements of a limited nature with Cuba but said the firm has not had any long-term business relationships with any Cuban manufacturer.
"As far as we know, there have only been occasional test purchases of a limited amount of products from Cuban suppliers in the late '80s, " she said.
The German newspaper reported that the first sofas made in Cuba had quality problems and that East German officials then traveled to Cuba to try to fix the problem.
It is not known how many sofas and tables, if any, were eventually delivered to Ikea.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/05/08/148178/cuban-american-lawmakers-want.html#storylink=cpy
STASI records show Cuba deal included IKEA furniture, antiques, rum and guns
MIAMI — The controversial contract to use Cuban prison labor to build IKEA furniture was part of a broader deal between companies run by the Cuban and East German security services that also involved Cuban antiques, cigars and guns, according to a researcher in Berlin.
Documents on the deal, found in the archives of East Germany's notorious STASI security agency, also refer to Cuban prison labor and indicate that former Cuban leader Fidel Castro personally approved the overall deal, said researcher Jorge Luis Garcia.
Garcia told El Nuevo Herald on Wednesday that he published an article about the deal in 2006 that mentioned the Cuban manufacture of furniture "for export to Sweden," and posted a note about it in his blog, STASI-MININT Connection, early last year.
The deal blossomed into scandal last week after a German newspaper reported that an IKEA subsidiary in Berlin and an East German company had contracted for Cuban prison labor to build 45,000 tables and 4,000 sofa groupings in 1987.
The Berlin Wall fell two years later and East Germany - officially the German Democratic Republic - was incorporated in 1990 into what previously had been known as West Germany.
It remains unclear how much of the 1987 deal was carried out, said the Cuban-born Garcia, who was interrogated in the STASI's underground cells in East Berlin in 1987. He now guides tours of the cells and researches the agency's archives.
It was also unclear if prison labor was used to make Cuban products that were not part of the IKEA contract.
One document Garcia found in the archives shows the East German companies involved in the deal were Delta GmbH and Art and Antiquities, known as KuA, both controlled by the Interior Ministry, in charge of domestic security.
The STASI, which monitored and repressed domestic dissent, was a much feared part of the ministry.
But the companies were officially branches of the government's foreign trading agency, Kommerzielle Koordinierung.
The agency was led by the notorious wheeler-dealer Alexander Schalck-Golodkowski, a STASI officer who defected in 1989.
The document shows that the Havana side of the deal was EMIAT, and described the company as owned by Cuba's Interior Ministry, or MININT.
Like its East German counterpart, MININT is in charge of domestic security and runs Cuba's prisons as well as the General Directory of State Security, which monitors and cracks down on dissidents.
Garcia said the German-language document shows that three officials of KuA and Delta visited Cuba and met with MININT and EMIAT officials Sept. 17-26, 1987 to discuss a broad array of deals.
"There were visits to production centers. In part, those centers are in penitentiary establishments of the MININT," Garcia quoted the document as saying. "EMIAT wants to increase the use of those installations for the manufacture of products for export."
The same document reported that Cuban Foreign Commerce Minister Ricardo Cabrisas had met with the East German visitors and told them, "This cooperation has been authorized by Companero Fidel Castro."
Garcia added that the document also reported that EMIAT "supplies the guest houses of the government and the Central Committee" of the Cuban Communist Party. "It is also a commercial branch of the MININT."
A separate document, in Spanish and dated Sept. 26, 1987, is a memorandum of understanding that lists all the agreements reached by the East German visitors and their Cuban hosts, but does not give all the details of all the deals.
Another document notes that the agreements included a deal on the production of "furniture for IKEA" with a total value of 12 million German marks. But it does not specifically mention prison labor.
It appears from the memo that Delta acted on behalf of the Swedish furniture and housewares chain.
Also mentioned in the memo are deals on textiles as well as 10,000 tons of grapefruit juice valued at 4.5 million marks, 200,000 bottles of rum and 200,000 cigars - all three products highly coveted in East Germany because of their "tropical" image.
KuA also ordered three containers of "antique furniture," the memo added. Castro's government seized tens of thousands of valuable antiques, paintings and sculptures as wealthy families fled abroad in the early years of the revolution and had to leave their property there.
The Cuban partners also asked for KuA help in exporting to the non-communist world what the document called "oldtimers" - the antique U.S.-made cars and trucks still seen in Cuban streets to this day. "400 oldtimers are ready for export," the document said.
Also mentioned in the memo were sales to East Germany of Cuban shellfish, coffee, precious metals and even coffins, Garcia said by telephone from Berlin. He also provided digital copies of some of the documents.
But there was no indication of which agreements were turned into legal contracts, or which contracts were actually carried out.
Cuba's economy went into a tailspin in the late 1980s as Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev began cutting subsidies to the island.
Other documents published in Germany last week showed that the initial batch of IKEA sofas produced in Cuba had quality problems, and that a group of Delta officials had to travel to the island to remedy the situation. There was no indication of what happened.
The memorandum of understanding was signed by three representatives of Delta and KuA as well as EMIAT chief Lt. Col. Enrique Sanchez, the first secretary at the Cuban embassy to East Germany and Gen. Santiago Borges. Garcia said other STASI documents show Borges ran MININT logistics.
Garca said another document in the STASI archives, reporting on the East Germans' trip to Cuba, showed Havana authorities were so happy that they made KuA president Axel Hilpert an honorary MININT colonel and upgraded his flight home to first class.
After he returned to East Berlin, Hilpert brokered the sale of 2,200 U.S.-made Colt pistols in Cuban stockpiles - apparently left over from pre-Castro days - to a Los Angeles weapons dealer, according to the document quoted by Garcia.
Hilpert, a longtime STASI agent code-named "Monika," became wealthy after the collapse of East Germany, telling reporters that he had made profitable contacts with Western business people during his years at Kommerzielle Koordinierung.
He was investigated in the 1990s in a case involving forged Cuban mail stamps and the mishandling of some funds during the final days of East Germany, and is now jailed while under investigation on other complaints.
But he is still the co-owner of record of the four-star Resort Schwielowsee in the former East Germany, which hosted a 2007 gathering of G-8 finance ministers. A single room at the lakeside resort near Berlin goes for about $160 a night.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/05/08/148178/cuban-american-lawmakers-want.html
MIAMI — The six Cuban-Americans in the Congress on Tuesday demanded "an urgent meeting" with the head of IKEA in North America to discuss whether the company used Cuban prison labor to make some of its furniture in the 1980s.
"It is the responsibility of every company to ensure that its products and their respective components are derived from responsible labor practices," the two senators and four House members wrote in a letter to Mike Ward, head of Ikea North America.
"They certainly should not derive from the dark prisons of authoritarian regimes that repress their own populations, including the denial of basic workers' rights."
It was signed by Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Bob Menendez, D-N.J., as well as South Florida Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Mario Diaz-Balart and David Rivera and New Jersey Democrat Albio Sires.
"We want to know the exact circumstances that led Ikea to apparently enter into an accord with the Castro dictatorship to produce some of its furniture in Cuba," said a statement issued by Ros-Lehtinen's office.
"These are serious allegations and they have caused much consternation in our communities, and rightly so," the statement added.
"The Castro brothers have misgoverned Cuba for more than half a century putting in place a tyrannical regime that harasses, beats, jails, exiles and kills anyone who stands in their way.
"Multinational corporations have a moral obligation to assure their businesses are not violating human rights."
The four-paragraph letter was sent to Ward at Ikea North America's headquarters in Conshohocken, Pa.
Spokeswoman Mona Liss said a senior official at Ikea headquarters in Sweden will meet with the Congress members "very quickly."
The authoritative German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported last week that Ikea had contracted for Cuban prisoners to build 45,000 tables and 4,000 sofa groupings in September of 1987.
German reporters found the information while reviewing archives of the former East Germany because officials of its communist government had facilitated the deal with Cuba. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 and East Germany ceased to exist the next year.
Ikea already has been investigating reports last fall that some of its buyers had signed deals to have prisoners in East Germany build furniture for the company in the 1970s and 1980s.
Liss told El Nuevo Herald in an email last week that Ikea would now widen that probe to include the Cuba allegations.
"We take these allegations very seriously," she said.
The German newspaper reported that documents found in East German archives showed that officials of that government had signed a deal with a Cuban man identified as Lt. Enrique Sanchez, in charge of EMIAT, a Cuban government enterprise that used prison labor to manufacture furniture.
Liss acknowledged last week that Ikea had agreements of a limited nature with Cuba but said the firm has not had any long-term business relationships with any Cuban manufacturer.
"As far as we know, there have only been occasional test purchases of a limited amount of products from Cuban suppliers in the late '80s, " she said.
The German newspaper reported that the first sofas made in Cuba had quality problems and that East German officials then traveled to Cuba to try to fix the problem.
It is not known how many sofas and tables, if any, were eventually delivered to Ikea.
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/05/08/148178/cuban-american-lawmakers-want.html#storylink=cpy