14ymedio, Madrid, January 12, 2024 — The Masonic Grand Lodge of Cuba reported at the Zanja police station, in Central Havana, the loss of a sum of 19,000 dollars (more than five million pesos in the informal currency market) which were stolen from the safe of Mario Alberto Urquía Carreño, grand master and co-president of the Board of Trustees of the Masonic Asylum.The money is the donations from the Freemasons to pay salaries to staff and finance the activities of a nursing home. The account of what happened, as read in a statement released by the institution, makes clear the distrust of the Board of Trustees in the Grand Lodge, to whom it had entrusted the care of the money and points, as can be deduced from the content, to an internal theft, since the Grand Master has agreed to assume full responsibility.
Sources close to the institution consulted by CubaNet said that there were no signs of violence or any sign that indicated that the door had been forced.
According to the Board of Trustees, an amount of 21,000 dollars was in their possession, news that began to spread by word of mouth on social networks, generating alarm among its members, who decided to move the money to a safer place considering that La Güinera, where its headquarters is located, has a “population highly prone to commit criminal acts.”
The decision, adopted unanimously, was to leave 2,000 dollars and take the remaining amount to the Grand Master’s office, in the historic building on Carlos III Street. The treasurer of the Board of Trustees, Ernesto Valdés García, and the director of the Asylum, Raúl Acosta, were in charge of the deposit, and they had three witnesses to the delivery operation in which minutes were drawn up and the money counted.
Last October, one of the members of the Board of Trustees asked that its treasurers and those of the Grand Lodge make a monthly count, at which point the Grand Master, upset by the mistrust, told them that the money was “in a safe in his office.”
On 9 January 2024, the Asylum agreed to
