2024-02-13 22:02:31
Western Union plans to resume remittance service to Cuba starting April 1. It is the date they gave to 14 intervene in calls to two different financial offices in the United States, one of them the headquarters. The employees could not answer why it will take so many months to restore the transfers. “There are problems with the banks in Cuba, and that has made us stop sending money, it is simply that they are still working to resolve the problems,” they expressed.
The Metropolitan Bank (BM) released a statement this Tuesday that alludes to the suspension of remittance services, with hardly any details. “If you have been sent money (transfer from abroad) through a remittance agency, we suggest you contact Fincimex, an agency that manages this service in Cuba,” reads the short text posted on their social networks.
Last Thursday, the same banking institution warned of “technical difficulties that affect branch services and those associated with technological payment channels”, without referring to transfers from abroad.
Via telephone, a Fincimex employee told this newspaper that “they are still working on the breakdown but there is nothing yet”
These cannot be carried out, as this newspaper confirmed, at least since last January 29, although some comments in the WB’s Facebook publication this Tuesday allude to the impossibility of carrying them out days before.
On Wednesday the 31st, one day before the main economic measures agreed by the Government last December came into force, the authorities decided to cancel them. The reason given was “a cybersecurity incident in the computer systems for the marketing of fuels whose origin has been identified as a virus from abroad.”
The widespread suspicion about hacking, which, according to official sources, has affected the marketing system of Cimex, a corporation belonging to the Gaesa military conglomerate, increased among Cubans when the Minister of Economy, Alejandro Gil Fernández, was dismissed last Friday.
Although Western Union provides a clear date to normalize remittances, the same does not happen with Fincimex. By telephone, an employee of the state financial company told this newspaper that “they are still working on the fault but there is nothing yet.”
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