By Dave Sherwood

HAVANA (Reuters) -Cuba on Thursday alleged that U.S.-funded media outlet El Toque was manipulating Cuba’s informal exchange rate to foment unrest on the island at a time when a plummeting peso has sent prices soaring.

Cuba called the black market exchange, calculated and published in real time by El Toque on its website, a “farce.” The benchmark rate has fluctuated wildly in the past several weeks but is again approaching a record high, wiping out the paltry spending power of most Cubans in a fast-dollarizing economy.

Cuba’s Communist-run government cited publicly available documents in the United States to show that El Toque and its editor-in-chief, Jose Jasan Nieves, had received U.S. funding and alleged they were “profiting by destabilizing Cuba.”

EL TOQUE: U.S. FUN

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