Puerto Rico's former secretary of education and four other people have been arrested on charges of steering federal money to unqualified, politically connected contractors.
Officials said there was no evidence that Keleher or Ávila-Marrero had personally benefited from the scheme, but Rodríguez said Velázquez Piñol had improperly taken advantage of contacts in the education and health insurance agencies to win federal contracts and illegally used federal money to pay for lobbying.
"It's a pity that we see this kind of scheme," Puerto Rico's head prosecutor, Rosa Emilia Rodríguez, said at a press conference in San Juan on Wednesday."It's a shame because there is a lot to do for Puerto Rico and the people accused here profited from this, they sought to benefit their own personal interests and did not think they could help or that they were in a position to help Puerto Rico ... It's embarrassing.
“It was alleged that the defendants engaged in a public corruption campaign and profited at the expense of the Puerto Rican citizens and students. This type of corruption is particularly egregious because it not only victimizes tax payers, it victimizes those citizens and students that are in need of educational assistance,” said Neil Sanchez, special agent in charge of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General’s Southern Region.
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