San Juan Superior Court Judge Iris L. Cancio González on Friday ordered the Puerto Rico Treasury Department to issue a formal notice explaining why it awarded the Puerto Rico Lottery Bureau’s advertising contract to Veintinueve de Febrero after a competitive process from which Digimedia was excluded.
Cancio González granted the preliminary injunction requested by Digimedia and denied the Treasury Department’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Digimedia went to court after Treasury Secretary Ángel Pantoja Rodríguez awarded the advertising contract to Veintinueve de Febrero, the agency that handled Gov. Jenniffer González Colón’s election campaign, even though Digimedia had served for several years as the advertising agency for the Treasury Department and its Lottery Bureau. The agreement is worth $8.7 million.
Although seven agencies took part in an evaluation process, Digimedia never received an official notice explaining who won the contract, the grounds for the decision or the mechanisms available to challenge the award.
“The lack of formal notice of the award constituted a real harm because it deprived Digimedia of the process to which it is entitled, as recognized by the Puerto Rico Supreme Court. As a result, the award of the contract to Veintinueve de Febrero Inc., executed on Oct. 3, 2025, in the absence of notice, constitutes substantial harm,” Cancio wrote in the partial judgment.
Digimedia obtained some information about the contract award after filing a lawsuit seeking access to public information. The documents it received show that it had earned the highest score, 95%, from the committee made up of Treasury Department employees who evaluated the proposals submitted by the advertising agencies. Veintinueve de Febrero, by contrast, received the lowest score, 82%, among the group of companies that became finalists in the competitive process.
The Treasury Department issued a Notice of Need for Professional Services for Advertising Agencies 2025, supposedly to create an open and transparent process in which different companies could take part in the qualification process, according to the partial judgment. To do so, it created an evaluation committee made up of seven Treasury employees, who, after reviewing the proposals, recommended awarding the contract to Digimedia. It has not yet been explained why the secretary overrode his team’s recommendation.
The Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI) reported that the agency’s president, Luis F. Rodríguez Villamil, has donated more than $14,000 to members of the New Progressive Party (PNP, in Spanish) since 2022, including the governor, San Juan Mayor Miguel Romero and former Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, according to electronic records from the Office of the Electoral Comptroller.
During that same period, Digimedia’s owners, David Habibe Vargas and Miguel Ortiz Zayas, also donated to different PNP figures. Habibe Vargas contributed more than $10,000 to the campaigns of Pierluisi, the governor and Rep. Jorge “Georgie” Navarro, as well as to the PNP Municipal Committee in San Juan. Ortiz Zayas donated $3,500 to González Colón and Pierluisi.
The court concluded that the Treasury Department failed to comply with its obligation to formally notify the award and to inform the parties of the mechanisms available for administrative and judicial review.
“The right to challenge the award of a public bidding process through judicial review is part of due process of law,” the court held.
In the legal proceedings, the Treasury Department argued that the hiring of advertising services was discretionary, based on criteria of trust and confidentiality under Executive Order 2021-029, and that it was not subject to the provisions of the Uniform Administrative Procedure Act.
The judge rejected those arguments and held that case law establishes that even when professional services are involved, competitive public contracting processes do trigger procedural guarantees and review mechanisms under the Uniform Administrative Procedure Act, particularly when there is a structured evaluation and award process.
The court also determined that Digimedia had shown a likelihood of prevailing on the merits of the case and ordered the Treasury Department to issue a formal, reasoned notice with the corresponding legal warnings so the parties can properly challenge the award.
Digimedia and Firings at Another Government Agency
Digimedia is also under public scrutiny over the dismissal of Norberto Almodóvar Vélez, the assistant secretary of the Office of Management and Permits, or OGPe, who denied that his departure from the agency was the result of personal issues, contrary to what Chief of Staff Francisco Domenech had said.
The Department of Economic Development and Commerce, or DDEC in Spanish, said it will make referrals to the Justice Department and the Office of Government Ethics over Almodóvar Vélez’s alleged intervention in a competitive process and over alleged improper pressure, retaliation and obstruction of an internal agency investigation. Almodóvar Vélez acknowledged in a radio interview on the program Primera Round that he intervened to prevent Digimedia’s hiring from being finalized but said he did so because of questions about the company’s background and procedural issues, since the proposal evaluation committee had not been officially established.
Almodóvar Vélez said two companies were submitted for evaluation for the contract: Digimedia and JJ Investment Group. However, he alleged that Digimedia was being promoted by the DDEC and its secretary, Sebastián Negrón Reichard, and that the advertising agency already had Negrón Reichard’s support regardless of the outcome of OGPe’s evaluation process.
According to Almodóvar Vélez, although he participated in the evaluation process and appointed members of the evaluation committee, there was no official letter formalizing its creation, “even though the proposals were addressed directly to the agency secretary,” he said.
The now-former official referred to the findings of the CPI’s investigation into Digimedia’s operations at the Treasury Department and the Lottery Bureau.
In the investigative series “Truco Instantáneo de la Lotería,” the CPI documented how Digimedia accumulated about $47.2 million in contracts since 2019, tied primarily to the Lottery Bureau, billing commissions of up to 15% for tasks such as arranging lunches and breakfasts for agency employees, as well as purchasing promotional materials that ultimately were not used for those purposes. Lottery Bureau officials assigned Digimedia not only advertising work, but also the coordination of large events, the purchase of gifts and the production of institutional activities, as well as duties that should have been handled by agency employees. Meanwhile, several of those employees, through arrangements coordinated by Digimedia, also frequently enjoyed access to parties and tickets to events sponsored with public funds.
The CPI tried to get a response from Almodóvar Vélez, but he was not available by the time this story was published. The CPI also contacted the DDEC to request the full evaluation file for the contracting process, but the agency did not provide it.
This translation was generated with the assistance of AI and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and clarity.
