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Four Freemasons sentenced in Havana over 300 dollars from a care home

The Diez de Octubre Municipal Court imposed two to four years of restricted liberty on four Freemasons for «illegal currency trafficking», in a case built on two transactions by the Llansó National Masonic Home, according to elTOQUE and Periódico Cubano.

The Diez de Octubre Municipal People's Court in Havana sentenced four Freemasons on November 5, 2026 for illegal currency trafficking. The outcome became known that same afternoon through an information note issued by the court itself and circulated on Facebook, according to elTOQUE and Periódico Cubano.

Those sentenced are José Ramón Viñas Alonso, former sovereign grand commander of the Supreme Council of the 33rd Degree and chair of the board of the Llansó National Masonic Home; the writer and former political prisoner Ángel Lázaro Santiesteban Prats, the current sovereign grand commander; Fernando Marcos García, the home's accountant, and Osvaldo Ernesto Villegas Digat.

Viñas Alonso received the heaviest penalty: four years of restricted liberty and a fine of 500 quotas of 50 CUP, 25,000 CUP in all. Marcos García was sentenced to three years with a fine of 500 quotas of 40 CUP, and Santiesteban Prats and Villegas Digat to two years each with the same fine, 20,000 pesos according to Periódico Cubano. Restricted liberty limits where the convicted may go, but does not mean imprisonment.

The indictment describes two transactions totalling 300 dollars, carried out almost two years apart. On September 14, 2023, Santiesteban handed over 49,600 pesos of his own in exchange for 200 dollars donated to the home; on June 13, 2025, Villegas Digat exchanged 100 dollars belonging to the institution for 37,500 pesos. According to the prosecution, Viñas Alonso authorised both.

The defence, led by lawyer Roberto Ortega Ortiz, asked for acquittal: it argued that the conduct was not a crime, that none of the defendants obtained personal gain and that the first 200 dollars went to buy powdered milk for the home's elderly residents. The Cubalex legal information centre said on November 4 that both transactions were recorded in the institution's accounting books.

On the secondary penalties the court went further than prosecutors had asked: it imposed on all four the loss of rights, a ban on leaving the country and a ban on holding any post or trade, when the prosecutor had requested that last measure only for Viñas Alonso.

Viñas Alonso and Santiesteban said State Security had offered to drop the charges and make it easier for them to leave the country if they gave up their Masonic posts. «They said, either you step down or we remove you», Santiesteban recounted, adding that he never admitted the offence and that the investigating officer attributed to him words that were not in his statement.

Although the offence charged is against the economic order, the file was investigated by the Interior Ministry unit that handles crimes against state security, and the hearing was held in a chamber that shares premises with the one for those crimes, with police and military deployed nearby and journalists kept away from the building.

Sources: elTOQUE · Periódico Cubano

Data updated: 2026-11-06T16:15:00.000Z

Four Freemasons sentenced in Havana over 300 dollars from a care home | Yamacoa Observatory