Former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced was arrested Thursday and charged with participating in a bribery scheme to finance her 2020 gubernatorial campaign, the Justice Department said, the Wall Street Journal reported. Ms. Vázquez Garced was sworn in as governor in August 2019, in the wake of a scandal involving the former governor and a constitutional crisis over who would succeed him. She had previously served as the territory’s justice secretary and was governor until the start of 2021. The alleged bribery scheme took place from December 2019 through June 2020 and involved bank executives, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and a political consultant, according to the Justice Department. The executives, Julio Martin Herrera Velutini and Frances Diaz, are the owner and president of an international bank that operates in San Juan, the Justice Department said. The bank was the subject of an examination by Puerto Rico’s Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions starting in 2019, according to the DOJ. Herrera Velutini and his consultant Mark Rossini, a former FBI special agent, allegedly promised to fund Ms. Vázquez Garced’s campaign as long as she fired the commissioner of the financial regulator and allowed Herrera Velutini to pick the replacement. Vázquez Garced allegedly agreed to the scheme, and the men allegedly paid over $300,000 to political consultants to support her campaign, the Justice Department said. Vázquez Garced then took action to demand the commissioner’s resignation and to appoint a person “personally selected by Herrera Velutini,” according to the DOJ. When Vázquez Garced lost her primary bid in 2020, Herrera Velutini tried to bribe her successor using an intermediary to favorably end the audit of his bank, the Justice Department said. Mr. Herrera Velutini allegedly directed $25,000 to a political-action committee associated with her successor. But the scheme this time was part of an FBI operation, with the intermediary acting under the agency’s direction.
