Office of Government Ethics Conceals Data on Public Officials’ Finances

Luis Pérez Vargas, the executive director of the Office of Government Ethics (OEG, in Spanish), has removed essential information from the summaries of public officials’ financial reports published on the agency’s website. This move complicates public scrutiny of the assets of officials who, due to the nature of their service, are required to account for their finances.

The Public Officials’ Financial Summary platform now only displays total income, liabilities, assets, and other transactions of the public official, but conceals the amount of money for each transaction.

The change was made in November, during election season. However, Pérez Vargas told the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) that it was not in response to any pressure from candidates, incoming or outgoing officials, or political parties. He noted that the initial steps to alter the visible data on the platform began in March 2024.

“I am accountable for my actions,” said the executive director. “I was convinced that the summary contained more personal details than required by law,” he added.

He acknowledged that no official had legally challenged the summaries. It was also never part of any legislative or public debate as a key issue in public service. It was the executive director of the OEG who, on his own initiative, believed that the summaries contained more information than required by the Organic Act of the Office of Government Ethics (Act 1-2012) and decided to remove public access to the data.

The change was made to the platform with the support of the assistant director of the Information Systems Area, Norberto Cruz Córdova, and the assistant director of Financial Report Audits, Héctor Bladuell Viera, which entailed a cost of about $40,000.

Act 1-2012 imposes on the OEG the obligation to provide public access to a summary of the financial reports that certain employees of the Executive Branch must submit to the agency each year. Public officials with decision-making power in agencies and public corporations, purchasing officers, members of bid boards, judges, and elected officials, among others, are required to submit these reports.

The summaries are derived from the financial report completed by the public official, which is much more comprehensive. Public officials must disclose any transaction that affects their wealth, and failing to do so can lead to administrative or criminal penalties

In the new summary, instead of the amount of money, only a table appears with the name of the section of the form being referenced, and a check mark is used to indicate whether the section was completed or if the requested data in the Financial Report does not apply to the official in question. The right side of the table shows  the total income, but unlike the summary previously published, it no longer indicates whether part of that income comes from a personal business.

The assets are added up, and it does not allow establishing how much of these assets correspond to real estate, financial accounts, investments, motor vehicles, artworks, antiques, collections, and jewelry. Nor can one know the extent of the public official’s debts and economic commitments, as only the total figure of liabilities is shown.

What Was Hidden?

The previous summary allowed seeing the amount of money earned from a public official’s personal business, the amount held in financial entities, the amount invested in bonds, stocks, and other instruments. It indicated the estimated value of motor vehicles owned, of real estate properties, an economic appraisal of artworks, jewelry, collections, among other assets. Similarly, it indicated in dollars and cents the official’s debts and obligations, such as mortgages and loans.

That way, it was possible to better understand where the capital of the public official filing the report came from. Completing these reports is an obligation under the Ethics Law for between 9,000 to 10,000 public officials in Puerto Rico, according to an estimate that Pérez Vargas provided. The public system has nearly 163,000 employees, according to data from the Institute of Statistics, a figure that includes the three branches of government.

The financial summaries published by the OEG have never detailed the sources of income, nor do they offer a description of the assets or the exact obligations or economic commitments of the public officials. However, the previously available information allowed some oversight, offering insight into a public official’s lifestyle, disclosed assets, and whether those changed during their time in office.

Cecille Blondet, executive director of Espacios Abiertos, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting civic participation and transparency in public management, said that omitting this information undermines the very purpose of the OEG, which is to prevent and stop officials from using their positions to enrich themselves and their families.

“This information is disclosed so that there are many more eyes that can oversee and draw attention to possible irregularities,” said Blondet.

Issel Masses Ferrer, founder of the organization Sembrando Sentido, also expressed concern that the decision to hide information from the reports will limit public oversight and that the OEG’s decision occurs precisely when new officials are entering the government with the change in administration. She said the OEG should reverse its decision and start a conversation about what other data should be disclosed.

“We are seeing a situation where oversight entities and the Government of Puerto Rico itself increasingly have fewer resources to execute their roles, and where civil society is often the one carrying out the oversight role, but how can we oversee if more and more is invested to improve the image of these pages but not to improve the information,” said Masses Ferrer, whose organization aims to promote the proper use and protection of public resources.

Why Change?

The Public Officials’ Financial Summary that was in effect until November 2024 had been active since 2017, when former OEG Director Zulma Rosario decided to put more data about the capital reported by public officials required to submit reports on their personal finances in the public eye. The change came after press reports denounced the vagueness that existed in the summaries that the OEG published prior to 2017.

For seven years, the OEG published this summary without its legality being questioned in judicial or legislative forums. Pérez Vargas told the CPI that he decided to question its validity due to a concern presented to him by a public servant, whose position he could not specify. This is the only concern that has been directly communicated to the executive director during the seven years the previous report had been used, but it was enough to prompt him to change it.

He said the woman — who he recalls works in the purchasing area or belongs to the bid board of some public entity — approached him during a forum and expressed her discomfort because a coworker had referenced the money she had deposited in the bank, which he learned about from the summary published by the OEG.

“I kept that in mind, and we started discussing it here [at the OEG],” said Pérez Vargas, who was appointed executive director of that office in 2019 by then-Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced.

Pérez Vargas and his team decided to make changes to the platform where these summaries are published to disclose only the totals of the assets, liabilities, and income that the public reported without detailing the amounts in which their different assets or debts are estimated. This effort took eight months, from March to November 2024.

“We need more information, not less information. Even with the information that was disclosed, even with the oversight that is done, unfortunately, there are several cases of people who use public office to improve their financial situation and that of their family,” said Blondet. “Maintaining public disclosure keeps the official alert that they must be careful with the personal transactions they make, what they do with their assets.”

Who or What Is Being Protected?

The OEG’s Assistant Director of Financial Report Audits said he also heard complaints from some officials who believed that disclosing the amount they had deposited in the bank could expose them to attacks against them or their family.

“We have never seen evidence, neither globally nor locally, that publishing this information could present any type of security risk for the official,” said the founder of the organization Sembrando Sentido.

Masses Ferrer indicated that the OEG’s executive director’s decision is another governmental attempt to limit access to public information.

“We are starting a new administration that almost immediately is presenting bills that threaten the few processes of the right to information that have been established to access information and that are already limiting,” she said.

Masses Ferrer refers to Bill 63, by Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz, to amend the Transparency and Access to Public Information Act. Among the amendments is extending the period that an agency has to provide the information requested by citizens.

The executive director of Sembrando Sentido pointed out that instead of dedicating efforts to limiting access to information, the focus should be on improving the tools available to facilitate oversight and for the Government to take preventive actions and not after there are losses of public funds or irregular and undesirable practices in public administration.

“There are many ways this information should be used to oversee internally and externally more intelligently and agilely,” said Masses Ferrer. “Many of these government databases do not communicate with each other… and increasingly technology presents itself as a positive weapon, as a key tool to streamline oversight in a context where we have fewer human resources, fewer bodies, that can do the work. But we have to know how to use technology and open data to our advantage,” she added.

Although it is not related to his duties at the OEG, Bladuell Viera offered his opinion that Puerto Rico “has not had access to very talented people to come and serve because they are not willing to have all this intimate financial information of theirs disclosed, and it is not because they are people who want to hide something illegal.”

The executive director of Espacios Abiertos emphasized that it is essential to maintain visibility over the assets of officials from the time they enter public service, throughout their careers, and upon leaving office.

“I believe that more information always contributes to clarity and less suspicion. The official should favor this precisely to show that their hands are clean and that they are completely transparent,” said Blondet. “When one enters public service, one has to show many things that perhaps are not published in the private sector. This is so because one, as an official, is entrusted with confidence over budget, decision-making, contracting, and having the information available [about their personal finances] I believe contributes to greater trust.”

Pérez Vargas said his determination seeks a balance between the public official’s privacy and the disclosure of information, and that the current summary has more information than the first one published when Act 1-2012 came into effect and fewer data than the one it replaced in 2017.

The platform also removed summaries of former officials whose information was previously available, along with reports from before 2020. The Ethics Law states that they should be preserved for up to five years after the audit is completed or three years after the public official has left their position or job.

According to the executive director of the OEG, the website will only have the information strictly required by law.

“Was it more important for you to protect a privacy that no one had questioned judicially than transparency? Is that your administrative policy?” the CPI asked without obtaining a precise response from the executive director.

“I believe it was a balance of what one understood was correct between transparency and privacy,” said Pérez Vargas, who has worked at the OEG since 2007. Before that, from 2002 to 2006, he was a legislative aide in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

He also did not directly answer whether he thought the summary approved by his predecessor Rosario was illegal.

“If it was believed at that time that it complied with [what the law says about] the summary, well, it may be right or it may be wrong,” he commented.

Pérez Vargas affirmed that citizen oversight is important for the entity he leads but asserted that the information contained in those summaries has never been an instrument for the presentation of complaints or public claims. He said that irregularities found in what public officials declared have been detected by the examination conducted by that Office or other criminal and journalistic investigations.

During the recently ended four-year term, the House of Representatives agreed to allow the OEG to publish the summary of reports submitted by its legislators. Due to the separation of powers, the Legislative and Judicial Branches have their own codes of ethics and are themselves responsible for ensuring compliance, including the submission of personal financial reports. All branches submit their reports to the OEG. The Judicial Branch still does so on paper, and those data are not available on the digital platform, nor are those of the senators. At the close of this edition, the legislative bodies had not approved their Codes of Ethics, so it is still unknown whether they will allow access to their reports.

New officials must submit their financial report within 90 days of their nomination. Outgoing officials must also submit a report reflecting their capital at the end of their term in public office.