The growing number of scandals that have rocked Puerto Rico have created a rift between Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo and his own inspector general and caused Congress to put a hold on as much as $180 million in funds earmarked for the public housing agency on the island.
Much of the alleged corruption revolves around Puerto Rico’s public housing authority, which gets approximately $250 million a year in U.S. taxpayer money – second only to the appropriations that go to New York City’s housing authority.
About 250,000 Puerto Ricans live in HUD’s 57,000 public housing units in the 332 public housing projects, some of which are substandard, badly deteriorated, and reek of piles of uncollected garbage.
Said HUD’s angry Inspector General Susan Gaffney, "The residents of public housing in Puerto Rico deserve to live in decent, safe and sanitary housing."
Gaffney told Business Week magazine: "I don’t understand what is necessary to get HUD moving."
In a carefully detailed expose of Puerto Rican corruption, the Nov. 27 issue of Business Week revealed cases involving bribery, fraud and corruption, including:
"In the past we had corruption, but never at this level, never with this amount of money, and never at the federal level," Anibal Acevedo Vila, Puerto Rico’s newly elected nonvoting representative in Congress, told Business Week.
Much of the corruption involves federal funds, a fact that has attracted Congress’ attention.
Said Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., head of a subcommittee that oversees HUD, "According to what the investigators tell us, they keep opening up new areas of corruption every time they look into something."
Congress isn’t alone in its concern about HUD’s role in the burgeoning scandals. Inspector General Gaffney has blasted "HUD’s failure to stop flagrant fraud, waste and abuse" at the Puerto Rican public housing authority.
Gaffney’s charges have pitted her against HUD Secretary Cuomo. Their disagreement has turned so nasty, according to Business Week, that she has now filed a sexual discrimination and harassment suit against Cuomo and other HUD officials, charging that they have retaliated against her because of her investigative work.
Through an aide Cuomo said that Gaffney’s suit was nothing more than an attempt to divert attention from charges that senior officials in her office were downloading pornography on her office computers.
The corruption issue has been connected with the issue of Puerto Rican statehood – politicians on both sides are said to have dipped into federal funds to help advance their pro- or anti-statehood causes.
There have been charges that federal funds have been diverted to mainland politicians. Business Week has documents that show that federal highway funds earmarked for Puerto Rico went to the island’s statehood party ($10,000), and $1,000 went to Ted Kennedy’s senatorial campaign.
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