A corruption scandal in Cuba has led to the dismissals of two deputy ministers of communications and the head of the state’s ETECSA telecommunications monopoly, according to reports Monday.

Another senior official of the Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A. (ETECSA) is “under a criminal process” and yet another has defected in Panama, according to the reports.

The reports appeared in the blogs Diario de Cuba, based in Spain and run by a group of well known exiled journalists, and A Vox Populi, written by Pablo Mendez Piña, an independent journalist in Havana.

They did not identify their sources and could not be independently confirmed. But El Nuevo Herald reported Sunday that Cuban prosecutors were investigating several top ETECSA officials for corruption.

Cuba’s official news media has reported nothing at on the scandal, but Havana residents said that word of the investigation and arrests has been circulating in the Cuban capital for a few weeks.

Diario de Cuba reported it had received information that Ramón Luis Linares, first vice minister of communications and information technology, and Alberto Rodríguez Arufe, another vice minister, had been fired.

Rodriguez Arufe previously served as Cuba’s ambassador to China and as No. 2 of the International Relations Department of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party.

The firings were linked to a fiber optic cable laid underwater from Venezuela to Cuba and completed in January, the blog noted. Its $70 million cost, which includes a leg to Jamaica, was financed by Venezuela.

A “criminal process” also has been opened against ETECSA’s deputy director for economic affairs “and all her team,” Diario de Cuba added, and a vice president of the company defected in Panama.

The blog and some Havana residents said the scandals also appeared to be linked to fraud with pre-paid cards for cell phones. About 80 percent of Cubans with cell phones use pre-paid cards rather than monthly plans.

The communications ministry largely controls ETECSA, which reported $400 million in income in 2005 and is one Cuba’s largest enterprises.

Mendez, meanwhile, wrote in his blog that ETECSA President Maimir Mesa was fired the first week of July after an audit of the branch that handles cellular phones detected “irregularities” of more than $800,000.

Prosecutors have detained the vice president and several other officials in that section, he alleged, as well as several persons in the transportation section because of a fraud with spare parts.

A vice president in charge of the transportation section who was in Panama on business defected rather than return home, Mendez added.

This is the second house-cleaning at ETECSA in recent years.

In 2006, then-Communications Minister Ramiro Valdes fired one of his vice ministers and ETECSA’s chief in what one news report described as “a drive to increase state control over the economy, improve efficiency and fight corruption.”

Valdes at the same time fired the head of Copextel, a state enterprise involved in advanced communications, computing and other high-tech, after some of its officials were caught taking kickbacks from foreign companies.

Valdes, who also served two long terms at the head of the powerful Ministry of Interior and is sometimes described as a possible successor or rival to Raúl Castro, was replaced in January by Brig. Gen. Medardo Diaz Toledo.

An announcement at the time said Valdes, who is also vice president of the ruling council of ministers, would focus on his responsibilities for oversight of the telecommunications, construction and basic industry sectors.