Crónica
The “Gorilla” signs a dubious agreement in Ponce, Puerto Rico
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When he visited Ponce last July, 39-year-old entrepreneur Felix Mostelac, dressed in an elegant blue Giorgio Armani suit to project an image of power, boasted of his alleged success in making money and chewed on a Cuban cigar in order to finish impressing his partners. In a series of meetings in which even politicians like Ponce Mayor Maria Melendez and former Gov. Rafael Hernandez Colon participated, Mostelac boasted of juicy commercial relations with the countries of Mercosur, the common market between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay. “The Duke” carried a Louis Vuitton briefcase in which he supposedly carried a laptop, but that was just one of his props, because what he always carried in it was a book, according to Barbara Hernandez, the Cuban public relations officer who worked with Mostelac for six months. He did not use a portable computer but rather a Blackberry mobile telephone to send messages to his subordinates to have them work for him. Miguel Lujan Paletta, president of the Chamber of Commerce of Mercosur and the Americas, based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, confirmed that legal actions are being taken against the entrepreneur, who was their representative in Miami, for allegations of fraud, abuse of his authority and irregularities in collecting membership dues, among other supposed tricks.