HAVANA, May 23: A Canadian businessman who has confessed to bribing Cuban officials was scheduled to go on trial in Havana today, almost two years after his arrest in a sweeping government crackdown on corruption.
The closed trial of 53-year-old Sarkis Yacoubian, originally from Armenia and the owner of import firm Tri-Star Caribbean, was expected to last two days. An associate of Yacoubian, Lebanese citizen Krikor Bayassalian, is a co-defendant.
The corruption trials of at least three other Canadian and British executives who were arrested shortly after Yacoubian was taken into custody in July 2011 are expected to follow.
The arrests were unprecedented for Cuba, where foreign businessmen suspected of corruption are usually deported, and viewed as a measure of President Raul Castro’s determination to clean up a vice he views as a threat to Cuba’s socialist system.
They sent shockwaves through Cuba’s small foreign business community where the companies involved were among the most visible players.
Cuba’s state-run media, however, has not yet reported the Yacoubian trial, nor mentioned the arrests and crackdown on foreign trade.
After his arrest, Yacoubian quickly cooperated with prosecutors, confessing to bribery and implicating other foreign firms, which sparked an investigation into the communist-run country’s import business.
Within months, dozens of Cuban officials and state purchasers were behind bars.
“I tried to explain to them (investigators) systematically how things could be done,” Yacoubian told the Toronto Star last week in his only interview from jail.
“I gave them drawings, designs. I gave them names, people, how they do it, why, when, where, what,” he said.
Yacoubian was expected to plead guilty to bribery, tax evasion and other crimes in the trial and could face a sentence of up to 12 years behind bars, the newspaper said. Bayassalian faces the same charges.
HIGH-LEVEL GRAFT
In September 2011, two months after Tri-Star Caribbean was shuttered, Canada-based Tokmakjian Group, one of the most important Western trading firms in Cuba, was closed and its now 73-year-old head, Cy Tokmakjian, also originally from Armenia and a Canadian citizen, was taken into custody.
Yacoubian had worked for Tokmakjian before founding Tri-Star to compete with his former employer in what became a bitter rivalry for Cuba’s automobile, motorized and heavy equipment market.
(AGENCIES)
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