Despite warnings of wrongdoing from within the campaign committee and an audit finding serious flaws, a Justice Department investigation into the summer of 2019 disbursements has remained unresolved for more than two years.
On July 29, 2019, during the events of the Summer of ‘19, in a cafe in Guaynabo, three FBI agents interviewed Raymond Cruz Hernández, at the time administrator of Ricardo Rosselló Nevares’s political committee. The Center for Investigative Journalism (CPI, in Spanish), in alliance with Las Noticias de TeleOnce’s Investigative Unit and Metro Puerto Rico, had access to the report that states what Cruz Hernández said then, according to the FBI, and that had not been revealed until now. Cruz Hernández said that between July 11 and 14, 2019, when he was still working as a special aide in the government house, La Fortaleza, Rosselló Nevares discussed with him the strategy to address the crisis that was emerging after the publication of the Telegram chat. Cruz Hernández said that back then, Chief of Staff Ricardo Llerandi, Secretary of Public Affairs, Anthony Maceira, and Carlos Mercader, who had been director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration (PRFAA) until April 2019, were also present. According to Cruz Hernández, Mercader suggested hiring a stateside firm to handle the Telegram chat crisis through the media.
The sale of the properties, for which the municipalities got ownership and control through forced expropriation to third parties, is not transparent. The expropriation and purchase agreements that Universal Properties drafts on behalf of the municipality with a “purchasing applicant” are not submitted to the Office of the Comptroller.
The absence of clear guidelines from the Puerto Rico Department of Housing to execute the program and poor advice from US firms hired for millions of dollars results in the delay in City Revitalization Program projects.
Education canceled the contract or constitutive letter of what would be the branch of the South Bronx Charter School for International Cultures & the Arts (SBCSICA) in Puerto Rico. The termination of the agreement came after the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) ordered the agency “to show cause regarding the awarding of the contract,” 20 days after the CPI revealed that this charter had accusations from the Office of the Comptroller of New York and that an incorporator of the Neighborhood Association For Inter-Cultural Affairs–Puerto Rico (NAICA-PR), Richard Izquierdo Arroyo, pleaded guilty to embezzling funds from another nonprofit organization he chaired in New York.
In the midst of the collapse of the island’s electrical system after Hurricane Fiona, the Bureau for Emergency and Disaster Management failed to comply with the Essential Communicators Act, which compels that agency to facilitate access to fuel for broadcasters, who found it hard to fill their backup electric generators with diesel.
An analysis by CPI and The Post found that despite ample federal funding, less than 1 percent of the FEMA and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) money slated for the island’s public water utility corporation since 2018 has been set aside to buy generators for water pumps. Local officials instead relied on a patchwork supply of emergency units but failed to get many in place ahead of the storm and supply them with enough diesel.
Aside from the public housing management business, for which federal authorities are investigating Walter and Eduardo Pierluisi Isern, Gov. Pedro Pierluisi’s cousins, the Pierluisi Isern and Pierluisi González-Coya families have more than 20 active companies in real estate, consulting and business and real estate management.
