Special prosecutors close in on Gonzalez's top two aides

Puerto Rico's Office of the Special Independent Prosecutor's Panel (OPFEI) formally expanded its investigation on Friday to include Governor Jenniffer González Colón's two most powerful aides, Secretary of la Gobernación Francisco Domenech —her chief of staff— and Deputy Secretary Itza García, escalating a probe that has grown from a single resignation letter into the gravest crisis of the Republican governor's administration.

In a notice to editors, the panel announced that, at the request of special independent prosecutors Fabiola Acarón Porrata-Doria and Ileana Agudo Calderón, it authorized an expansion of the case involving former officials of the Permits Management Office (OGPe) to include Domenech and García. The prosecutors indicated that the request responded to information obtained during their investigative work on the original assignment, and the panel said the purpose is to determine these officials' legal responsibility, if any, in the criminal and administrative spheres. Acting under Article 11 of Act 2 of 1988, the statute that created the panel, it granted the two prosecutors an initial 45-day term to conduct the new investigation simultaneously with the original case, and stated these would be its only declarations on the matter. Domenech and García have denied all the allegations, calling them "totally false", and neither has been charged with any crime.

THE PAPER TRAIL BEHIND THE PROBE

The expansion confirms what the panel's president, Ygrí Rivera Sánchez, had signaled in June, when she stated that "the special independent prosecutors have to investigate everyone, because there is no other way to conduct an investigation," and that beyond former permits officials Norberto Almodóvar and Charlene Neuman —the two initially assigned a special prosecutor— "the others are being investigated." The scandal traces back to late May, when former Economic Development and Commerce (DDEC) secretary Sebastián Negrón Reichard and roughly a dozen senior officials resigned en masse, with the secretary telling Bloomberg that he and the governor "no longer trust" each other. On June 15 he filed a formal complaint with the OPFEI backed by WhatsApp exchanges, call logs and official documents. Among them, a message sent past midnight in which Domenech allegedly wrote that he would not tolerate people who were not members of the New Progressive Party (PNP) holding trust positions earning "un dineral," and exchanges about the resignation of Almodóvar, the permits official whose removal the governor allegedly ordered and whose suspension Domenech later allegedly directed be reversed. The complaint also cited pending payments to Luis Sánchez, García's live-in fiancé, whose recently created firm, Next Wave Solutions LLC, secured $100,000 at the permits office and $120,000 at DDEC in record time, billing $100 an hour for "coordination" services, according to reporting by WKAQ. Sworn statements filed on July 9 by Negrón Reichard and former incentives director Ernesto Zayas García allege that Domenech ordered the hiring of Sánchez by phone and that García personally pushed the contract and pressured DDEC to place the wife of Politank's president at the permits office, while that lobbying firm —which Domenech founded and ran before entering government— pursued a project tied to an estimated $120 million tax credit. Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz referred the statements to eleven entities, including the FBI, and on July 14 filed a separate referral against García for the possible commission of seven crimes. The Senate, through Resolution 548, opened its own three-month investigation, and this Friday Rivera Schatz denounced that the Justice Department, allegedly on Domenech's instructions, canceled the assignments of the prosecutors and lawyers detailed to the Senate who collaborated with the corruption referrals, a move Justice Secretary Lourdes Gómez Torres denied was retaliatory.

ACTIVE DEMOCRATS AT THE HEART OF A REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATION

The scandal has already reached Washington. At a June 17 hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on the state of the territories, Chairman Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, pressed González Colón over the reports of malfeasance at DDEC and asked how Congress could be assured that federal funds sent to Puerto Rico "aren't being misused or misplaced." The governor answered that the allegations were "completely false" but were nonetheless being investigated, and defended her administration's oversight of federal dollars. The exchange carries a political twist for stateside readers. González Colón is a Republican —a former Republican National Committee member who campaigned on statehood and conservative credentials— yet the chief of staff at the center of the storm is one of Puerto Rico's most prominent Democrats. Domenech directed Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns on the island and remains an active Democrat who ran for Democratic national committeeman and lost. The pressure now comes from both parties. Resident Commissioner Pablo José Hernández, a Democrat, has demanded that the governor fire Domenech outright, warning that "credible and constant" corruption allegations damage Puerto Rico's reputation in Washington and endanger federal funds, and asking what La Fortaleza is covering up and whom it protects. González Colón has stood by her man, insisting the allegations against him are false and stating that the secretary "enjoys my confidence," even as she acknowledged she would evaluate changes to her team over the summer. With two special prosecutors now formally on their case, a 45-day clock running, sworn statements on file, parallel Senate and ethics investigations underway, a Republican committee chairman asking pointed questions about federal money, and prosecutors pulled from the Senate the same week, the question hanging over the island's Republican governor is how long she can afford to keep answering for her Democratic chief of staff.