A former governor of Puerto Rico whose term in office was preceded by the prior governor’s own career-ending corruption scandal has been arrested in connection with campaign finance bribery charges.
On Thursday, former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez was arrested in a bribery scheme in which she allegedly pushed out a high-ranking government official in exchange for more than $300,000 to help her 2020 campaign.
Here’s what Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division said in a statement:
“The alleged bribery scheme rose to the highest levels of the Puerto Rican government, threatening public trust in our electoral processes and institutions of governance. The Department of Justice is committed to holding accountable those who wrongly believe there is one rule of law for the powerful and another for the powerless. No one is above the rule of law.”
Authorities believe that in return for the donations, Vázquez would have appointed the donors’ desired candidate to the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions (OCIF).
According to the DOJ, Vázquez Garced’s indictment says that an international bank run by Herrera Velutini, 50, was given certain regulatory leeway in exchange for funding the then-governor’s 2020 campaign. That campaign would have been Vázquez Garced’s first electoral effort for the post.
She was swept into office the year before after Ricardo Rosselló resigned the governorship following widespread protests after Rosselló and members of his cabinet were found to have shared racist and homophobic text messages.
Velutini’s bank was the subject of an examination by the Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions. With the alleged help of former FBI special agent Mark Rossini, 60, and other “intermediaries” the banker allegedly made overtures to Vázquez Garced to make the oversight issue go away, the DOJ said.
More details of this report from The Daily Wire:
Vázquez had previously served as Puerto Rico’s secretary of justice and as a district attorney, and she became governor in 2019, after her predecessor, Ricardo Rosselló, was forced to step down by island-wide protests after a scandal of his own.
The DOJ also named Herrera Velutini, Frances Diaz, John Blakeman, and Mark Rossini as accused participants in the corruption scheme. Velutini, 50, is a dual Venezuelan-Italian citizen and the owner of an international bank, and Diaz, a 50-year-old resident of Puerto Rico, was the bank’s president. Rossini, 60, was a former FBI special agent and a consultant for Velutini, and Blakeman, 53, is a political consultant who worked on Vázquez’s 2020 campaign.
Velutini’s bank was reportedly audited in 2019 by the OCIF. Velutini and Rossini are accused of reaching out via third parties to various political candidates and offering bribes and campaign support in exchange for the replacement of the current commissioner of the OCIF with a former consultant of Velutini’s. After Vázquez lost her party primary in 2020, the group allegedly attempted to reach out to her successor; an FBI informant posing as his representative caught them.
Diaz and Blakeman have both pleaded guilty to charges connected to the bribery scheme, according to the indictment.
Peter John Porrata, a member of Vázquez’s legal team, told CNN on Thursday that Vázquez will plead not guilty to the charges.
Vázquez’s successor, Governor Pedro Pierluisi, said in response to the ruling that under his administration, there was “zero tolerance for corruption.”
“No one is above the law in Puerto Rico,” he said. “Faced with this news that certainly affects and lacerates the confidence of our people, I reiterate that in my administration, we will continue to have a common front with federal authorities against anyone who commits an improper act, no matter where it comes from or who it may implicate.”
Vázquez, Herrera, and Rossini each face up to 20 years in prison on charges of conspiracy, federal programs bribery, and honest services fraud, the DOJ said.