Castro brothers press anti-corruption drive

by Marc Frank
Havana
Cuba's ruling Communist Party has sent thousands of its members, including retirees turned into detectives, to track corruption that Defense Minister Raul Castro warns is spreading like a "deadly cancer," government sources said this week.

President Fidel Castro's younger brother, in a video making the rounds of the country's leadership, says 6,000 party cadre and 2,000 retired members working in pairs have discovered "the situation is far worse than we imagined."

Raul Castro, 74, number two in Cuba's political hierarchy and constitutionally in line to succeed his 79-year-old brother if he were to retire or become incapacitated, heads the party's Commission against Corruption and Illegalities set up three years ago.

"The deadly cancer has metastasized from our knees up to here," Raul Castro, pointing to his chest, told national-level leaders and administrators in a recent meeting, according to sources who had seen the videotape.

Castro singled out the East Havana municipal wholesale food company as an example of how managers and their government superiors appear to be "blind" to the diversion of resources to the black market.
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