The Cipriani family is like the Medici clan of New York restaurants; they rule over an empire stretching from the Rainbow Room to the eponymous Cipriani. But like, say, Piero di Lorenzo de' Medici, some Ciprianis are bad apples. Says the AP: "New York City restaurateur Giuseppe Cipriani and his father pleaded guilty Tuesday to evading $10 million in state and city taxes." That's a lotta meatball! Giuseppe the younger is a principal investor in Cuban-themed boite du jour Socialista. And in that context as well, his corruption makes sense!

As Professors Sergio Díaz-Briquets and Jorge Pérez-López write in their insightful study Corruption in Cuba:

After three decades of socialist rule and with the promise of material prosperity dashed by the collapse of the socialist world in the early 1990s, petty corruption became ubiquitous and more and more Cubans became adept at trading on the black market whatever they could steal from the state. As socialist Cuba opened its economy to the outside world as a survival strategy, absent former Soviet subsidies, many among the political and military elite turned into socialist managers and entrepreneurs and began to fathom new ways to protect and in many cases enhance their privileges by entering into shady deals presumably forbidden by socialist morality rules.

So at least Giuseppe earns plaudits for verisimilitude.