Wondering why hurricane recovery aid hasn’t been helping Puerto Rico? The usual reason: corruption.
The FBI on Wednesday arrested two former senior officials who served in the administration of Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló, leading the chair of the House committee that oversees Puerto Rico to call for the governor to step down.
The arrests also spurred concerns on Capitol Hill about the billions of dollars in aid that Congress has approved for the island.
The federal indictment says the former officials illegally directed federal funding to politically connected contractors. The arrests come about a month after Congress approved a controversial disaster aid bill that earmarked additional funding for Puerto Rico’s recovery from Hurricane Maria in 2017, which were tied up in part because President Trump called island officials “incompetent or corrupt.”
Snip.
Six people were charged in the 32-count indictment. They include Julia Keleher, who served as Puerto Rico’s education secretary until April; and Ángela Ávila-Marrero, who was the executive director of the Puerto Rico Health Insurance Administration until late June.
“Keleher and Avila-Marrero exploited their government positions and fraudulently awarded contracts funded with federal monies,” U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez-Vélez said in a statement. “The charged offenses are reprehensible, more so in light of Puerto Rico’s fiscal crisis.”
Prosecutors said Rosselló was not involved in the investigation, according to the Associated Press. The governor said on Twitter he had cut short a vacation to return to the island.
(Hat tip: Ryan Saavedra.)
Remember all the grief President Donald Trump took for calling Puerto Rico’s government “incompetent or corrupt?” Looks like he was right again.
Last year, the mayor of Sabana Grande and two other officials were arrested on corruption charges involving $8 million in federal and local funds. Also last year, the House held hearings on corruption in the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority? “PREPA officials allegedly were paid $5,000 and provided free entry tickets worth $1,000 apiece to restore power to exotic dance clubs ahead of schedule. In other instances, PREPA officials are accused of restoring power to their own homes before restoring power to ‘critical locations such as San Juan’s Rio Piedras Medical Center and the Luis Munoz Marin International Airport.'” Indeed, Puerto Rico has a long tradition of corruption and fraud.
Rossello is affiliated with both the New Progressive Party and the Democratic Party (most Puerto Rican politicians are a members of one of the three local parties and either the Republican or Democratic Party, and one does not always map cleanly or automatically to the other), and was a Clinton delegate in 2008 and an Obama delegate in 2012.
Puerto Rico has always occupied an odd place, being both a nearby American territory and the source of one of New York City’s poorest ethnic groups, meaning that much of attention paid Puerto Rico itself was driven by the domestic political concerns of NYC democratic politicians. Providing honest government is vital to an island as poor as Puerto Rico, but given how this cuts against the need for reaping the fruits of political patronage, both on the island and here, the prognosis for radical improvement anytime soon would appear to be grim.