Sometimes, you win by losing. And some winners, quite simply, seem to have luck on their side.
Advertising agency Veintinueve de Febrero, Inc. secured a contract worth up to $8.5 million with the Puerto Rico Treasury Department in October 2025, even though the committee that evaluated its proposal and those of seven other firms said it charged excessive rates, showed “little creativity, nothing innovative,” and had only “excellent technological capacity” in its favor. This year, the contract increased to $8.7 million.
The evaluation sheet containing those comments is part of the documents the Treasury Department was forced to turn over after Digimedia, one of the agencies that competed for the contract, sued the agency to force it to disclose the process it used to evaluate the participating advertising firms.
Since 2019, Digimedia had managed Treasury Department campaigns, including those for the Puerto Rico Lottery Bureau, which oversees both the Traditional Lottery and the Electronic Lottery.
The documents show that Digimedia received the highest score from the evaluation committee, with 95%. Still, Treasury Secretary Ángel Pantoja Rodríguez awarded the contract to Veintinueve de Febrero, the agency that worked on Gov. Jenniffer González Colón’s political campaign. Veintinueve de Febrero ranked last among the three finalists, with 82%. Sajo/McCann came in second, with 87%.
On June 24, 2025, the seven Treasury Department employees who made up the committee evaluating the Notice of Need for Professional Services for the hiring of advertising agencies told Pantoja Rodríguez that “after discussing and evaluating the results, we recommend hiring the agency that got the highest score.”
Nothing in the court record explains why the Treasury secretary overrode the committee’s recommendation and hired Veintinueve de Febrero instead of Digimedia, as the evaluation group had advised.
In its response to the lawsuit, the Treasury Department said it chose Veintinueve de Febrero over the committee’s recommendation because the secretary has the authority to do so.
The Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) requested comment from the Treasury Department about the contracting decision, but the agency had not responded as of publication time.
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The committee was made up of Lottery Bureau Assistant Secretary Heidi M. Hernández Olivo; Treasury Department Communications Director Vilmar Trinta Negrón; and employees Iris G. Ríos Rivera, Carlos Calderón Ayala, Johanna Rohena Quiñonez, Jason Torres and Josué Cardona Hernández.
The group also evaluated the advertising agencies Sajo/McCann, Tere Suárez, The Raevis Group, Arco Publicidad and Culture Create. It assessed 13 criteria, each with its own score. Agencies that received less than 70% were disqualified, the committee explained in the letter informing the secretary of its recommendation.
The members of the evaluation committee knew Digimedia well. Several of them are part of the Lottery Bureau, which hired Digimedia for virtually every kind of event, from organizing breakfasts and lunches to producing large-scale shows featuring artists, as a CPI investigation revealed. Meanwhile, through Digimedia’s arrangements, several officials had frequent access to parties and tickets to events funded with public money.
Digimedia Sues the Treasury Department
On Dec. 17, 2025, Digimedia sued the Treasury Department and, among other things, asked the Superior Court to declare the contract award to Veintinueve de Febrero null and void. Digimedia had served as the Treasury Department’s advertising agency from 2019 to 2021 and then again from 2022 through August 2025. During those periods, it received about $47.2 million in advertising contracts.
Treasury Department attorney Carlos Sagardía Abreu asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit.
“Digimedia’s entire claim rests on a fatally flawed legal premise: the attempt to equate the discretionary contracting of highly specialized professional services with a formal competitive bidding adjudication process,” the Treasury Department said in its motion.
“The selection of advertising services is a discretionary exercise requiring a high degree of judgment and trust,” it added.
Digimedia later amended its lawsuit and alleged that it was denied the basis for the agency’s decision because it never received notice of the award or the final determination and, therefore, was denied due process. The advertising agency said it learned of the evaluation process only after filing a lawsuit for access to information.
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“The proposal that was ultimately awarded exceeded the rates prevailing in the market, which contravenes the principle of reasonableness in the expenditure of public funds and the duty to safeguard the sound administration of the public treasury,” Digimedia alleges in its lawsuit.
“Such conduct is incompatible with the rules requiring that government contracts be awarded according to objective, transparent and economically reasonable criteria, in protection of the public interest,” it adds.
Roulette and Fate
Veintinueve de Febrero’s contract, which expires June 30, 2026, states that most of the budget is tied directly to Lottery advertising: $5.5 million for the Electronic Lottery, $3 million for the Traditional Lottery and $226,612 for direct Treasury Department services.
In addition to fixed fees, Veintinueve de Febrero can earn a commission of up to 15% on media buys, the hiring of vendors, talent and influencers, and other services associated with carrying out campaigns.
The Governor and ‘the Winning Team’
The Puerto Rico Comptroller’s Office Contract Registry shows that Veintinueve de Febrero’s expansion under the González Colón administration is not limited to this agreement. Since the governor took office, the agency has accumulated $20.5 million in contracts with government agencies and $1.3 million with the municipalities of San Juan and Bayamón. Those contracts include advertising, public relations, communications consulting, media buying, audiovisual production, media monitoring and administrative services.
Its government clients also include the Puerto Rico Tourism Company, which, along with the Lotteries, has some of the largest advertising budgets, according to industry sources. Compared with the $5.8 million it received in contracts with government agencies during Pedro Pierluisi’s administration, the $20.5 million it now holds under the current administration represents an increase of more than 251%, according to contracts registered with the Puerto Rico Comptroller’s Office.
Last year, the CPI reported that AAFAF awarded nearly $1 million in public relations, advertising and communications contracts to close collaborators of the governor, including Veintinueve de Febrero. The agency’s proposal to AAFAF called for creating communications plans, aligning the messaging of different government agencies with public policy and centralizing information on media, communications and public opinion “in one place.”
This type of contracting reflects a pattern seen over the past three New Progressive Party administrations, in which AAFAF has served as the channel for awarding contracts to agencies tied to its political campaigns, as happened with KOI during Ricardo Rosselló’s administration and with Publicidad Tere Suárez under Pedro Pierluisi.
This translation was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and clarity.
