The US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the agency that runs American sanctions lists, designated five entities and six individuals on 6 August over the procurement of military equipment abroad for Cuba's Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR), and updated two existing designations with further identifying detail1. The list names Unión de Industria Militar, the military-industrial holding company, the Empresa Militar Industrial Yuri Gagarin plant, and the state trading houses Tecnotex and Technoimport2. The State Department, counting the updated pair alongside the new names, put the individual total at eight3.
Tecnotex and Technoimport buy rather than build. The two houses hold the contracts, open the letters of credit and take delivery from foreign suppliers, which puts them at the step where a Cuban military purchase becomes a foreign sale. Blocking them is a different move from blocking the plants that use what arrives: a supplier in a third country may still want the business, but not through the two houses that have historically written the paperwork. The same action issued a guidance note restating that the measures do not target food, medicine or medical devices4.
Until August the campaign had spent the summer on money rather than materiel. The State Department designated ten Cuban entities on 13 July, and OFAC named the medical-missions operator CSMC on 23 July, both aimed at hard currency coming in. The 6 August action turns to what the armed forces buy with it.
