Puerto Rico’s development agency chief resigns after claiming government interference

Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

The head of Puer­to Ri­co ’s key eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment agency an­nounced his res­ig­na­tion on Tues­day as he crit­i­cized the U.S. ter­ri­to­ry’s ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jen­nif­fer González, ac­cus­ing it of in­ter­fer­ing in the de­part­ment’s work.

The de­par­ture of Se­bastián Ne­grón Re­ichard from the pow­er­ful De­part­ment of Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment and Com­merce comes at a crit­i­cal mo­ment for Puer­to Ri­co as it seeks to re­vive its econ­o­my and at­tract wealthy in­vestors.

Ne­grón Re­ichard not­ed in his state­ment that more than 10 of­fi­cials with lead­er­ship roles at the agency — in­clud­ing its chief of staff, gen­er­al coun­sel and the fi­nance chief — al­so stepped down fol­low­ing what he called in­ter­ven­tions by the gov­ern­ment. He said those in­clude re­vers­ing two sum­ma­ry sus­pen­sions that Ne­grón Re­ichard had is­sued af­ter an in­ves­ti­ga­tion found im­prop­er in­ter­ven­tions in the agency’s pro­cure­ment ac­tiv­i­ties.

The gov­ern­ment’s ac­tions “made it im­pos­si­ble to con­tin­ue per­form­ing the du­ties of the po­si­tion with the in­tegri­ty and au­ton­o­my that the role re­quires and that every sec­re­tary owes to the pub­lic,” Ne­grón Re­ichard said.

A $10.5 bil­lion deal would cre­ate a self-stor­age gi­ant in the U.S.

He added that those ac­tions al­so left “un­pro­tect­ed the staff who re­port­ed al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties in in­ter­nal process­es.” Ne­grón Re­ichard said he would not com­ment fur­ther, pend­ing le­gal ac­tions.

Gov. González ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment af­ter re­porters ques­tioned her about the res­ig­na­tion and brushed off ques­tions about al­leged in­ter­fer­ence.

“I’m dis­ap­point­ed be­cause I think he was a great agency sec­re­tary,” she said. “We ac­com­plished a lot and worked hard.”

Mean­while, Puer­to Ri­co Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Thomás Rivera Schatz, who has re­cent­ly been at odds with González, though they are from the same pro-state­hood par­ty, called the res­ig­na­tion “ex­treme­ly re­gret­table.”

“I hope that those re­spon­si­ble for eval­u­at­ing and un­der­stand­ing the scope of these cir­cum­stances will do so and take the cor­rec­tive ac­tions they need to take, which I’ve been warn­ing them about for quite some time,” Rivera Schatz said.

“If they don’t, well, I’ll be talk­ing to these peo­ple, and if they bring ev­i­dence to me that shows some­thing is wrong, I’ll go af­ter them,” he added. —SAN JUAN, Puer­to Ri­co (AP)