Leaked Messages Reveal How a Leading U.S.-Based Advocate of Engagement With Cuba Operates

In late 2025, through the collaboration of journalists from Schemes, the investigative unit of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, elTOQUE gained access to leaked emails from three institutional accounts at the Cuban government's embassy in Washington.

The leak comprises 4,713 files belonging to the accounts of the ambassador, the consul and one of the administrative assistants of the Cuban diplomatic mission. After verifying and cross-checking the documents, elTOQUE selected those with the greatest journalistic impact and political relevance, with the aim of contributing to transparency and public oversight of state resources and of the behaviour of Cuban officials.

The Embassy Files is an exclusive elTOQUE series.

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When his mother was about to turn 80, Albert Fox wanted to give her a trip to Cuba. She had been born on the island, long before Fidel Castro took power, but her family migrated to the United States when she was 10 months old.

Fox's efforts came to nothing. A veteran of the inner workings of Capitol Hill, he ran into a wall of bureaucratic obstacles that left him "surprised and shocked," as he recounted years later when describing how his activism for a rapprochement between the two governments began. That an American citizen could be barred by his own government from traveling where he wished struck him as a revelation of sorts.

Albert Augustus Fox Jr. was born in 1942 in Tampa, a Florida city whose metropolitan area is home to more than 170,000 Cubans or people with Cuban origins. He attended the University of Maryland and became involved in Washington political circles at a young age. He worked as a staffer in Congress, and in 1984 he founded a political lobbying firm with two other partners. According to public records, the company was involuntarily dissolved a year later.

Back in Florida, in 1998, Fox founded the Alliance for a Responsible Cuba Policy in his hometown. Since then, he has been one of the most persistent advocates in American politics for normalizing bilateral relations and expanding trade between Cuba and its northern neighbor.

When asked by elTOQUE how he viewed his work nearly 30 years on, Fox called the results a “failure.” In his view, Cubans today are suffering the economic and physical toll of the country’s situation more than ever, a reality he blamed primarily on U.S. policy toward Cuba. 

Al, or Alberto — as he is also known — says he has made more than 100 legal trips to the island-nation over 19 years and has organized visits by U.S. members of Congress, governors, business executives and other Americans with some degree of power or influence who have taken an interest in Cuba. Fox frames it as a matter of pragmatism: "we have to deal with the Cuban government as it is, not as we want it to be."

But whatever Fox's own view of his work, over the course of his trips he appears to have developed a close relationship with officials at the Cuban Embassy in Washington. At least, that is what emerges from the 82 emails in which his account appears in the mailbox dump we obtained. The messages reviewed by elTOQUE span from 2021 to 2025.

Are you free for a cigar or lunch?

The earliest email we have from Fox is dated May 25, 2021, and is addressed to the Cuban consul in Washington at the time, Alejandro Padrón Corral. Fox asked whether a friend and "personal mentor" might be able to seek treatment for his illness in Cuba. "As you know, he is one of the few elected officials in Tampa who has advocated lifting the embargo," he added.

Padrón Corral forwarded the message to Lianys Torres, the island's ambassador to the United States. The emails contain no subsequent record of how the matter was resolved.

In another message, dated June 23, 2021, Fox asked whether Torres's phone number was the same as that of the previous ambassador, José Ramón Cabañas. Padrón Corral confirmed to Fox that it was the same number.

The messages we found suggests that Fox knew the Cuban officials well. That is hardly surprising, given that by 2021 the activist had more than 20 years of contact with Cuban diplomacy behind him. One of Fox's earliest public achievements was intervening — alongside others — on the Cuban side in the 2000 repatriation of child-rafter Elián González; another was the passage of the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 (TSRA). That legislation carved out an exception allowing U.S. companies to sell agricultural products, medicine and food to the island. Fox was among its most prominent champions.

Days after the anti-government demonstrations of July 11, 2021 — the largest citizen protest in the history of Cuba's communist regime — Fox wrote to the embassy to ask whether it would hold an event for the Washington visit of Carlos Lazo, a Cuban American Iraq War veteran turned anti-embargo activist. On July 25, Lazo demonstrated outside the White House calling for an end to sanctions.

"Not yet. We're waiting for a proposal from Carlos to see whether it's possible, depending on pandemic regulations," Consul Padrón Corral replied.

After the Lazo preamble, Albert Fox got to the point and tried to arrange a meeting with Padrón. "Could you meet me at 3:30 p.m. at Shelly's Backroom Cigar Bar at 1331 F Street NW for a cigar, or at the embassy, or on Monday for lunch?" he asked.

The meeting was ultimately set for July 26. Fox suggested Padrón Corral bring along a colleague. His choice was Rodney González Maestrey, who long held the post of third secretary at the embassy and who in 2021 was using an official commercial-section email address at the mission.

In 2012, then-Sen. Marco Rubio had identified González Maestrey as the man who informed on Cuban activist Jorge Luis García Pérez, known as Antúnez. According to Rubio, González had access to a congressional hearing at which Antúnez testified about human rights violations in Cuba. When the activist returned to the island, he said he was beaten by the authorities as a result of his testimony.

"Plan on lunch Monday at 12:00 p.m. I'll give you the location later. Joe Stewart, former secretary of the U.S. Senate, will be joining us. For 20 years he has backed lifting the embargo alongside me. Although he's retired, he is a very influential person. Un abrazo," Fox wrote.

The guest, Walter "Joseph" Stewart, began his career as a Senate aide in 1951. For more than 25 years he worked as an assistant to Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd, until in 1987 he was elected secretary of the Senate on Byrd's recommendation. He held the post until 1994, when he left to work for a political lobbying firm.

Stewart sits on the board of the Alliance for Responsible Cuba Policy, the organization Fox created in 1998.

A couple of hours after the lunch, Fox wrote to the consul to ask whether he had happened to find Stewart's cellphone in his car. The former Senate secretary had lost it after the meeting.

"Albert. I don't have access to the car right now. As soon as I can, I'll check and let you know. If it's there, I'll take it to his house myself," the consul said. "Thank you for taking care of Joe. He is very important to our cause," Fox replied.

When Fox began working on "the cause," the political ground linking the two sides of the Florida Straits was rough and all but barren, compared with what it would become under the Obama administration. In 2001 he took Republican Rep. Jeff Flake of Arizona and his wife to the island. In 2002, he promoted and organized the first visit to Cuba by a senior Florida figure since Castro’s take on power. Tampa's Democratic mayor, Dick Greco, flew by private jet to Havana's José Martí International Airport for a four-day trip. Once there, he met with Fidel Castro, discussed transportation, agriculture and garbage collection in the Cuban capital, and dined on shrimp cocktail and yellow rice with chicken.

"It was the kind of stealth visit no Miami politician would be caught making," the Miami Herald wrote in August 2002.

The trip was not publicized in advance. Greco was accompanied by more than a dozen lawmakers and activists. According to the Herald, the meeting between Castro and Greco was made possible by the contacts Fox had cultivated; he traveled with the mayor as well.

The delegation, its travel and its activities were financed by the foundation Fox had created four years earlier. At the time, the activist treated it as a symbolic milestone, Tampa being the state's second-largest city. He also said the Cuban side had ruled out holding the meeting with a delegation from Miami.

"That shows how irrelevant they are," Fox said then.

A dinner gone wrong

After the 2021 exchanges, the next moves by Fox we have a record of came in early 2023. On Jan. 6, he wrote to then Cuban Consul Nora Alberteris to plan the itinerary for Ambassador Torres's visit to Tampa a couple of months later.

"(...) There are rumors circulating in Tampa that the Foreign Ministry is working with the law firm Holland & Knight and with [attorney] Frank Sánchez on a visit to Tampa. We know this because Sánchez called Councilman Bill Carlson to see whether he wanted to help him with 'the ambassador's visit to Tampa.' We know Frank very well. He has never done anything to improve relations between the United States and Cuba. But he is a great self-promoter! We decided not to work with him/Holland & Knight for several reasons, among them that they have personal and professional dealings with CANF [the Cuban American National Foundation]. (...) I strongly recommend not involving people like CANF, the Cuban Liberty Council and Casa Cuba."

The law firm Fox mentions says on its website that it has extensive experience obtaining licenses from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The firm states that it has a distinctive understanding and firsthand experience of Cuba's legal system, foreign investment regulations and culture.

Frank Sánchez, for his part, was nominated by Obama as deputy secretary of commerce for international trade in 2009 and was one of his advisers on Latin America. Sánchez is listed among the professionals working for Holland & Knight.

When reached for comment, Sánchez told elTOQUE that neither he nor Holland & Knight had been involved in planning or coordinating the ambassador’s visit, and that he had not contacted Councilman Carlson about it. He also said the firm has never worked with the Cuban Embassy in the United States and does not currently have any professional relationship with it.

The itinerary Fox proposed included visits to buildings of historical significance for the Cuban American community, talks in cafés and a tour of the University of Tampa and its José Martí program, among other activities. Amid the protocol haze, one item stood out: proposed exchanges with the city's shipping agencies and Cuba travel agencies, and a private meeting with Vicente Amor, according to Fox the only person holding licenses from both the U.S. and Cuban governments to import and export goods in the area.

Vicente Amor is one of Tampa's leading anti-sanctions activists. A longtime local businessman, he is tied to several companies that do business with the Cuban government. For years, his businesses have worked with the Washington consulate, particularly as intermediary agencies handling passports, tourist cards and legal paperwork.

Amor is regularly quoted by Cuban government propaganda. In Cuba, he studied at the Matanzas Theological Seminary, where he also taught. A 2020 report notes that Amor served as vice president of the foundation Fox created. He and Fox also sat on the board of a short-lived pro-engagement organization called the Cuban Cultural Fest Foundation.

In a later email about the Cuban ambassador's upcoming Tampa visit, dated Jan. 23, Fox added: "I am putting together a 'select committee' of Cuban Americans in Tampa who share the goal of ending the embargo against Cuba and not the U.S. policy of 'regime change.' The strategy includes, among other things, having people like Vicente Amor run for local office and take on a more public role. Right now, only Batistiano/fascist Cuban Americans hold public office in Tampa!"

In a tone somewhere between excited and cryptic, Fox closed his email by saying he had recently traveled to Cuba and needed to speak with the ambassador about "SEVERAL SIGNIFICANT MEETINGS I HAD." 

On Aug. 13, 2024 — the day Fidel Castro would have turned 98 — Vicente Amor wrote on X: "For a little over three years now, an essay has been rattling around in my head that I might title 'My Fathers.' That list would be long: Vicente Amor Plasencia, Jesus, Martí, Socrates, Alexander the Great, Marcus Aurelius, Sklodowska-Curie, Sun Tzu, etc., and, well, Fidel. Yes, Fidel without a doubt."

Amor did not respond to our request for comment. 

Fox, who turned 81 in 2023, implicitly acknowledged in his Jan. 23 message that he was thinking about stepping back from his pro-engagement activism. "As I retire from the 'unofficial post' of coordinator of United States, Tampa and Cuba policy in the Bay area, Dr. [Graham] Sowa will play an important role in the new leadership."

Graham Sowa is one of 244 American doctors to graduate from the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM) in Havana. In 2019, Sowa said that allegations of labor exploitation, coercion, human trafficking and forced labor in Cuba's overseas medical missions were "a complete lie." Various United Nations rapporteurs and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have identified practices in those medical missions that could constitute labor rights violations and human trafficking.

An embassy delegation was to make an advance trip to Key West in late February 2023. For that visit, a meeting was arranged with Isaac Valdés, who in 2013 was an executive at a travel agency seeking to organize direct flights between the Florida Keys and Havana. We do not know if the meeting happened.

The Cubans apparently asked Fox for help getting from Key West to Tampa, and he put them in touch with Ariel Quintella, the pilot of an eight-seat light aircraft and a construction businessman in the Tampa Bay area.

"[Quintella] has taken his plane to Cuba many times," Fox added.

After the stop in the Keys, the delegation arrived in Tampa in early March 2023. Fox met Ambassador Torres and her party for dinner at the French restaurant Mise en Place. They were joined by local officials Guido Maniscalco, a member of the Tampa City Council; Karen Pérez, a member of the Hillsborough County School Board; and Cindy Stuart, Hillsborough clerk of court and controller. 

Councilman Carlson told elTOQUE that a third person invited him to the dinner, but he declined the invitation. He also told us that he did not helped arrange the meeting. 

Midway through the dinner, several Cuban human rights activists interrupted the conversation to protest the ambassador's presence. The confrontation was led by former political prisoner Roberto Pizano, who spent 18 years behind bars in Cuba, and his son Raphael. The scene was recorded on one of the protesters' cellphones and circulated by several South Florida news outlets.

In the footage, Fox can be seen talking to Torres, who remains stone-faced, saying nothing, her arms crossed.

Days later, Vicente Amor went on television to give his version of events, even though he had not been at the dinner. The broadcast shows Amor greeting the ambassador with flowers at the airport. Referring to the activists who protested her presence, he said: "These people have created a fictional world, one that doesn't exist in reality (...). The laws in Cuba are constantly changing in a positive direction."

We found no public statements from Fox after the dinner he organized was disrupted.

"Doing the right thing" on Cuba

We had no record of Fox’s communication with the embassy until March 2025. Fox wanted the ambassador to receive a book by former American diplomat Stuart Eizenstat. He was particularly keen to get her a copy and proposed that Torres meet him and Eizenstat for lunch. We have no record of whether the meeting took place.

By July 2025, the second Trump administration had been in office six months. The president had already settled on a policy of maximum pressure toward the island-nation. At that point, the pressure consisted mainly of unilaterally shutting down Cuba's medical services contracts with a number of countries.

On July 17, according to the emails, Fox met by videoconference with the outgoing Cuban consul, Nora Alberteris, and her incoming replacement, Yanet Pumariega. In the meeting, Fox told the officials he would be organizing a gathering of 23 Cuban Americans with David Jolly, then a Democratic candidate for governor of Florida.

In a message dated July 21, 2025, Fox told the consuls: "Right now David's views on U.S.-Cuba relations are not like mine, but they're also not as bad as Mario Díaz-Balart's. But is there really any difference between being 'wrong on a policy' and 'a little bit wrong'? NO."

"However," he went on, "because a lot of Batista/Miami Mafia Cubans [sic] are upset about President Trump's deportations, maybe this is the right moment for Congressman David Jolly to reconsider his views on U.S. policy toward Cuba!"

In an attached email addressed to the 23 Cuban Americans, the Tampa lobbyist clarified: "The meeting is not a debate, but rather an opportunity for the congressman to hear your views on U.S. policy toward Cuba and for you to hear the congressman's views." The event was to be moderated by Sowa. We have no public record that the meeting took place.

In 2007, AP reported that a trip to Cuba by then-Idaho Gov. Butch Otter cost local taxpayers $13,433. The remainder of the trip's $85,000 cost was covered by private individuals. The organizer was Fox.

Usually one to avoid the glare of national politics, Fox has also announced electoral ventures of his own, with little success. In 2006, he ran for Congress in one of Tampa's districts. He finished fourth out of five in a race won by Kathy Castor. In 2013, when Castor condemned U.S. sanctions on Cuba, Fox said he felt vindicated. Years later, he told his embassy contacts of his disappointment when Castor criticized the Cuban state's repression of the July 11 demonstrators.

In 2021, he announced that he would run for the Senate seat held by Marco Rubio. Fox launched the campaign with $50,000 of his own money and said he would not accept large donations. He withdrew from the race on June 17, 2022, citing what he described as a dishonest electoral process by the Florida Democratic Party. 

On Aug. 15, 2025, the Cuban Embassy wrote to Fox inviting him to take part in the Sixth National Meeting of Cubans Residing in the U.S., to be held on Sept. 20. Fox expressed interest in attending, but shared his concern that he had an unbreakable commitment in his own city that day, albeit at a different hour.

"I am hosting a table that includes former Congressman David Jolly, the Democratic candidate for governor of Florida, and his wife. Several of us in Tampa have been 'advising David' to do 'the right thing' on U.S. policy toward Cuba," he wrote.

On November 3, 2026, Jolly lost the Florida gubernatorial election to his Republican opponent, Byron Donalds. elTOQUE contacted Jolly for comment but did not receive a response. 

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As can be seen in the leaked correspondence, Fox presented himself in his communications with the Cuban Embassy as someone capable of opening doors, making connections, arranging meetings and offering policy recommendations.

U.S. law provides that those who act as advisers or consultants to foreign countries may be required to register with the federal government under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

The law defines an agent of a foreign principal as any person or entity who, directly or through others, “acts as an agent, representative, employee, or servant, or any person who acts in any other capacity at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal” in the United States.

A foreign agent must register with the Justice Department within ten days of agreeing to act on behalf of the foreign principal. As a general rule, the agent must disclose information about the nature of their relationship with the foreign principal, including a copy of any written contract or the terms of an oral agreement, and must report any money spent and received if there was a financial exchange.

Fox’s case is unusual because, in the communications we reviewed, he is always the one making an offer or proposal to Cuban officials.

A FARA expert consulted by elTOQUE said that an initial offer of help or advice to a foreign principal does not require registration with the authorities. However, if the relationship continues over the years, authorities could take an interest in it. 

Not all U.S. citizens who interact with Cuban government officials or express support for their views are required to register under FARA.

The expert emphasized that each case must be assessed individually. Whether a person’s relationship with a foreign government meets the legal definition of an agency relationship under U.S. law depends on the specific circumstances, including the nature and scope of that relationship. A relationship with a foreign government, on its own, does not establish that a person is acting as its agent under U.S. law.

When contacted by elTOQUE, Fox described his relationship with the Cuban government and its representatives as «professional and cordial». «I have come to learn that the Cuban government is not as good as it claims to be, nor as bad as my government says it is», Fox said. «I do not support the Cuban government, just as I do not support the governments of China, Russia, North Korea, or Saudi Arabia», he added.

He also maintained that he had never received money for his efforts to promote closer ties between the two countries. On the contrary, he said, he had spent thousands of dollars of his own money pursuing that goal.

Fox told elTOQUE that he would not respond to the remaining questions we had sent him.