Cuban General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Callejas,    was one of the most powerful figures in Cuba who headed the Grupo de Administración Empresarial SA (GAESA ), the business group of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR) (cubanstudiesinstitute.)

By  Gary  Raynaldo     DIPLOMATIC  TIMES

General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Callejas, one of the most powerful figures in Cuba ,who headed the Grupo de Administración Empresarial SA (GAESA) has died, the Communist Party newspaper Granma said. Rodríguez López-Callejas, 62, reportedly died suddenly of a heart attack Friday. GAESA is the Cuban military’s largest company, which controls large portions of Cuba’s economy including tourism. The state-owned CP newspaper Granma lauded  Rodriguez  Lopez-Calleja’s death,  noting the general’s  “brilliant record of services to the Homeland and the Cuban Revolution”.  Rodríguez Lopez-Calleja, 62, was once married to former Cuban leader Raul Castro’s daughter Deborah. In  September 2020, the US government sanctioned Rodríguez López-Callejas,  and added three Cuban military-owned companies to its Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List including GAESA, FINCIMEX, and Kave Coffee S.A.  “Cuban military-controlled FINCIMEX funnels remittances through channels that disproportionately benefit the Cuban military.  Kave Coffee S.A., a coffee company domiciled in Havana and incorporated in Panama, is part of an international network of Cuban-owned companies maintained by the Cuban military and used to evade the U.S. embargo,”  according to  then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.  The blacklist prohibited US people or companies from dealing with Rodríguez López-Callejas and blocked his assets.

The state-owned CP newspaper Granma lauded  Rodriguez  Lopez-Calleja’s death,  noting the general’s  “brilliant record of services to the Homeland and the Cuban Revolution”

“A revolutionary has left us, a man who served the Homeland and the Revolution in all its trenches,”

-Cuba President Díaz-Canel posted on Twitter

General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Callejas  (Source: granma-cu) 

“His excellent academic results in pre-university education allowed him to obtain a scholarship to study the Bachelor of International Economic Relations, at the State Institute of Foreign Relations in Moscow, in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. In 1983 he finished his higher studies at that institution with a Gold Title”   -granma-cu

In 1987.  Rodríguez López-Callejas joined the ranks of the Communist Party of Cuba and in 1990, as an officer of the Military Counterintelligence, he fulfilled an internationalist mission in the People’s Republic of Angola, until 1991, participating in various combative actions.