Mauro Casagrandi

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Mauro Casagrandi (born San Salvador, 1939) is an Italian businessman based in Havana, Cuba.

With a right-wing Italian diplomat as a father, he lived in Central America and other countries during his childhood. He moved to Cuba in 1961 shortly after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, intending to represent leading Italian companies including FIAT and Olivetti. A Knight of Malta, he also became the Ambassador of the Sovereign and Military Order of Malta in Havana.

During his overseas travels, he was allegedly approached by the Central Intelligence Agency, who hoped to use him to gather insider information about Fidel Castro's Cuba. He accepted the offer in Spain in 1975, but intending instead to benefit the Cuban government, which he supported. He therefore became a double agent of the Cuban regime.^[1]

In the 1990s however, he started becoming disillusioned with the Cuban ideology. Many observers believe that he was related to the leak of the classified documents related to the purge of the Centro de Estudios Sobre América.