Puerto Rico’s former governor, Wanda Vasquez, was arrested by the FBI on Thursday and charged with accepting bribes from a campaign donor while in office and appointing a regulatory official of his choice in exchange for funding her campaign.
Ms. Vasquez, 62, was arrested at her home after a grand jury indicted her.
Donor Julio M. Herrera Vellutini — a Venezuelan banker mired in regulatory trouble in Puerto Rico — was also charged. Herrera, 50, owns Bancrédito, an international bank that came under scrutiny from Puerto Rico regulators for suspicious banking transactions.
According to the Justice Department, Mr. Herrera wanted the island’s top banking regulator replaced and in exchange offered to pay $300,000 to political consultants working on the governor’s campaign. Ms. Vasquez, who was facing re-election at the time, agreed to the plan, said W. Stephen Muldrow, the United States attorney for Puerto Rico, adding that Mr. Herrera had since formed a political action committee for Mr. Ms. Vasquez.
The 42-page grand jury indictment details the meetings and text messages that are said to show the essence of the “concession for quo” arrangement. The governor fulfilled his end of the bargain, forcing the incumbent bank commissioner to step down and appointing Mr. Herrera as the new commissioner, according to the indictment.
To cover up the “illegal and corrupt purpose of the bribes,” the payments to Mr. Herrera were routed through Mark T. Rossini, who served as a consultant to Mr. Herrera and is accused of facilitating the settlement, the Justice Department said .
Mr. Rossini, 60, is a former supervisory FBI agent who, before the Sept. 11 attacks, was assigned to a CIA task force investigating al Qaeda but has been criminally charged for illegally conducting unauthorized searches of a government computer. After pleading guilty to those charges, he paid a fine and served community service and a year of probation.
The former governor, banker and former federal agent were charged with conspiracy, federal bribery and honest services fraud and could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted, Mr. Muldrow said.
Two other people involved in the bribery scheme – the bank’s president and one of Ms Vazquez’s campaign advisers – pleaded guilty to conspiracy and each face up to five years in prison.
Ms. Vazquez spoke to reporters Thursday outside federal court in San Juan, where she was released on $50,000 bail. Usually stylishly groomed when in public, Ms Vazquez looked like someone who had been dragged out of bed.
“I repeat to the people and to all of you: I am innocent,” Ms Vazquez said. “I have not committed any crime or wrongdoing. Now it’s up to me to defend myself. I assure you they have done me a great injustice.
Her attorney, Luis Plaza, noted that she is not accused of personally receiving bribe money.
“Even the indictment doesn’t allege that she enriched herself one cent,” Mr. Plaza said.
The former governor’s arrest coincides with a wave of unrelated public corruption cases on the island, including the arrests of nine mayors so far this year.
Ms. Vasquez was the Commonwealth’s attorney general in 2019 when mass protests ousted Governor Ricardo A. Rossello from office. The island has no lieutenant governor, and the first post in the line of succession, secretary of state, was vacant at the time, so Mr. Rossello’s resignation unexpectedly catapulted Ms. Vasquez into the governorship. A Republican and a member of the island’s pro-state party, she served less than two years, ending Mr Rosselló’s term, but lost her re-election bid when she was defeated in the 2020 primary.
Federal prosecutors said that when Ms. Vasquez lost the primary, Mr. Herrera tried to offer a bribe to the winner, the current governor, Pedro R. Pierluisi. But the person representing Mr. Pierluisi in the scheme was actually working undercover for the FBI
In May, Ms. Vasquez gathered reporters at the office of her lawyer, Mr. Plaza, to announce that she was under investigation. At the time, he described the investigation as a “technical” issue that would be fought in court.
“We’re going to sue him and we’re going to win,” Mr. Plaza, a former prosecutor, said in May.
In November 2018, when she was the island’s justice minister, Ms. Vasquez faced allegations that she improperly intervened on behalf of her daughter and son-in-law in a case involving a theft from their residence. Ms Vazquez was briefly suspended from her post during the investigation. But she was later cleared of any ethical wrongdoing in the case by a judge who said there was insufficient evidence against her.
Before becoming attorney general, Ms. Vazquez ran Puerto Rico’s Office of Women’s Affairs, where she often clashed with women’s advocacy groups who said she was not doing enough to combat domestic violence.
Federal prosecutors said on Thursday that Mr. Herrera was in London and Mr. Rossini was in Spain and that efforts would be made to extradite them.
Attempts to reach Mr. Rossini for comment were unsuccessful.
Luis Delgado, Herrera’s attorney, said his client denies the charges detailed in the indictment.
“They were fake. There were no campaign contributions as they claimed,” Mr. Delgado said. “We look forward to addressing them in court.”
The bank that owns Mr Herrera released a statement saying he had resigned as chairman and board member.
“The bank continues to operate as normal and to work closely and cooperatively with Puerto Rico and federal banking authorities,” Gregorio D’Andrea, chief operating officer, said in a statement.
Corey R. Amundson, chief of the Justice Department’s public integrity division, said the case was one of a series of recent corruption cases across the country, including in Ohio, Illinois and North Carolina, that involved businessmen.
“We cannot and will not turn a blind eye to the critical role of the corrupt members of the business world who make this corruption possible and provide the opportunities,” he said at a news conference in San Juan on Thursday. “They must be held accountable and they will be held accountable.
Gov. Pierluisi said Thursday that his predecessor’s arrest shows that “no one is above the law in Puerto Rico.”
Although Mr. Muldrow has repeatedly stressed that the current governor has not been charged with any crimes, Mr. Pierluisi’s campaign has faced legal problems of its own.
The president and treasurer of a political action committee that raised money for Mr. Pierluisi’s campaign pleaded guilty in May to a scheme to conceal the origins of “dark money,” the U.S. attorney’s office said. The governor has denied any ties to the PAC.
Another former governor of Puerto Rico, Anibal Acevedo Villa, was acquitted of federal corruption charges in 2009.
“Corruption is not a victimless crime,” said Joseph Gonzalez, special agent in charge of the FBI in Puerto Rico. “The victim is the people of Puerto Rico.”
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