(30 May 2019) The Federal Prosecutor for the U.S. District of Puerto Rico has filed charges against three state Congressional employees for corruption and alleged fraud involving “phantom employees.”
The court filed 18 charges against Ángel Figueroa Cruz, the Director of the Senate Office of Government Affairs for the Puerto Rico Senate and president of the Municipal Assembly Bayamón; Isoel Sánchez Santiago, collaborator with the President of Puerto Rico’s Senate; and Chrystal Robles Báez, a contractor.
The prosecutor’s office alleges that Figueroa, Santiago and Robles all submitted fraudulent invoices in the name of non-existing employees for services rendered to the Senate and then shared a total of 27-thousand US dollars amongst themselves.
“Those 27-thousand dollars might as well be millions of dollars when we talk about a bankrupt government,” said Rosa Emilia Rodríguez-Vélez, the Federal Prosecutor for the U.S. District of Puerto Rico at a news conference on Thursday.
Thomas Rivera Schatz, the President of Puerto Rico’s Senate attempted to distance himself from his former collaborator charged in the scheme saying that “it’s impossible for an agency chief or a legislative president to know what hundreds and hundreds of employees are doing here.”
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