The always controversial former governor of Puerto Rico and also former Secretary of Justice, Wanda Vázquez, was arrested this Thursday for allegedly receiving $300,000 from a bank on the island to subsidize her 2020 political campaign.
According to the Puerto Rico federal prosecutor’s office, the sum was paid so that the bank, which has not been identified in the court papers, could choose the island’s financial regulator.
But the indictment mentions a Venezuelan-born banker, Julio Martín Herrera Velutini, owner and president of Bancredito, a Puerto Rican international bank. It is unclear if it is the same bank involved in the scandal.
Vázquez, 62, who was governor from 2019 to 2020, faces seven charges of corruption, said the federal prosecutor for the District of Puerto Rico, Stephen Muldrow, at a press conference.
According to Muldrow, the banker Herrera, working through a former FBI agent named Mark Rossini, offered to finance Vázquez’s campaign through his advisers if he fired the head of the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions of Puerto Rico, which had been investigating to the institution since 2019.
Vázquez complied and named a new commissioner in May 2020. He was “a former consultant to the international bank owned by Herrera,” according to the Justice Department. The current banking regulator, Natalia Zequeira, was appointed in January 2021.
After Vázquez lost the primary election to incumbent Governor Pedro Pierluisi, Herrera, through Rossini, also tried to bribe the governor, Muldrow said.
“This indictment does not allege wrongdoing of any kind on the part of the current governor,” Muldrow said.
Vazquez pleaded not guilty and was released on $50,000 bond.
“I have not committed any crime or wrongdoing,” he said in a brief televised statement after his initial hearing. “A great injustice is being committed against me.”
On the afternoon of this Thursday, several attempts to communicate with Herrera through Bancredito and Rossini and through social networks were unsuccessful.
Herrera, Rossini and Vázquez were each charged with conspiracy, bribery with federal programs and wire fraud. If convicted, they face a maximum of twenty years in prison.
The accusation also names Frances Díaz, identified as the president of the unnamed bank but which has been publicly linked to Bancredito; and John Blakeman, Vázquez’s political consultant. Both have pleaded guilty and face up to five years in prison.
Vázquez became Governor of Puerto Rico, by ruling of the local Supreme Court, during the tumultuous summer of 2019, when Governor Ricardo Rosselló left office after the content of a rude and demeaning private chat group in which I was. The incident sparked massive protests.
Then-Secretary of State Pedro Pierluisi briefly became governor, only to be sidelined by Congress, pushing Vázquez, then Justice Secretary, into the governorship.
“Today we see once again that no one is above the law in Puerto Rico,” Governor Pierluisi said in a statement. “We all have to be united against this social evil, and under my administration there is zero tolerance for corruption.”
“The criminal actions of the defendants in this case strike a blow at the heart of our democracy and further erode our citizens’ trust in their institutions of government,” Muldrow said in a statement. “Our determination to bring to justice those who have been entrusted by the public to serve with integrity and who violate that trust remains steadfast.”
