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In her last year in office, the Comptroller will audit the agency's agreement with the company and the use of CDBG federal funds

Yesmín Valdivieso read the Treasury Department's contract with OPG Technology, and the company gave her a presentation detailing the agreement . (Ramón “Tonito” Zayas)

As she enters her last year in charge of the Office of the Comptroller, Yesmín Valdivieso will put that agency's oversight apparatus on theTreasury Department to audit the contract signed with the company OPG Technology for the sale of stamps and revenue stamps over the internet.

This past January, that contract -signed in 2017- was under public scrutiny, after Teresita Fuentes resigned from the Treasury secretariat over reservations about that agreement, as El Nuevo Día reported.

In an interview with this newspaper, Valdivieso said the analysis of the contract has already begun and that, earlier this month, she received a presentation from the company, led by Orlin P. Goble, in which they laid out details of the document.

The Comptroller insisted, nonetheless, that her auditors will review that everything is in order.

“I read it (the contract), and they gave us a presentation. Apparently, the way it works is the way it has to work. Of course, the presentation says they are complying with everything,” Valdivieso maintained.

“I still have to go over there (to the Treasury Department) and really see that, for example, if 10 people are supposed to receive the reports, are the 10 people receiving it?,” she specified.

Valdivieso believes that the 10-year contract could “sound steep because it involves a lot of money.” “I would have tried for lower percentages,” she commented.

That contract with the Treasury Department does not reflect an amount, since the company charges a percentage of sales for stamps and revenue stamps, as the document reviewed by this outlet establishes. During the system's implementation phase, the charge the Treasury paid was 3.6% of the nominal value of each product, and in the maintenance stage it was slightly reduced.

“When we go into the Treasury, we will make sure they are complying with the reports arriving, that the deposits are being made directly to the Treasury secretary's account and that the company is paid like any contractor,” she elaborated.

According to what El Nuevo Día learned, Fuentes's concern was that some consultants warned her that the OPG Technology contract allegedly does not safeguard the best interests of the government of Puerto Rico. This, after she ordered an evaluation of that agreement.

Amid the controversy, former Treasury secretary Juan Zaragoza said that, during his tenure, he canceled the contract, which was later reinstated by the current administration, in March 2017.

According to El Nuevo Día sources, the Puerto Rico Justice Department and federal agencies have requested information about the contract. Goble has acknowledged that there is a “million-dollar fraud” with the stamps and revenue stamps, but stated that his company is not linked to the irregularities and cooperates with the authorities.

CDBG funds audit

In addition to the Treasury contract, the Comptroller's agenda during her last year in that seat is headed by the audit of billions of dollars in federal funds that would pass through the Housing Department as part of the efforts to recover the island after the passage of Hurricane María.

“Here we project which audits we are going to do over the next three years… We did not have Housing in our audit plan for this coming year, but if they are going to receive billions of dollars, then I have to include it,” Valdivieso expressed.

She recalled that her office can only carry out this type of analysis once payments are issued, but anticipated that she will not let much time pass before making sure that the money from that federal program is being spent appropriately.

“We cannot wait until nine billion dollars are gone to start auditing. Definitely not,” she commented.

For now, the Comptroller believes that Housing has established a structure that will allow it to watch over the proper use of CDBG funds, by designating internal auditors from the agency itself to evaluate transactions day to day.

“At least on paper, I understand that we are prepared,” said Valdivieso, acknowledging that she is aware of the public questioning by president Donald Trump about the handling of federal funds assigned to Puerto Rico.

“Even if I'm not auditing yet (at Housing), it doesn't mean I don't know what's going on there. I do know, plus federal Housing (HUD, by its acronym in English) is the one that has primary responsibility and is one of the (agencies) that has the most staff in the Office of the Inspector General,” she stressed.

Likewise, she wagered that the agreements the government would establish with the College of Engineers and Land Surveyors and other entities should make it so that the new projects have more effective inspection than the works of the “Tu Hogar Renace” program, which suffered significant failures in the area of supervision.

“Yes, I understand so,” Valdivieso answered when asked whether she considered that money had been lost in the minor improvements carried out through “Tu Hogar Renace,” after her agency reviewed citizens' complaints against the program.

She explained that they could not carry out an official audit because some problems that arose in the residences they took as models prevented them from having a “scientific” sample, as the regulations on that type of study require.

In any case, she said they visited 1,000 homes throughout the island and, at the end of that process, her office passed the results to the Housing Department and to governor Ricardo Rosselló Nevares.

She mentioned that most of the problems they identified were caused by the lack of supervision of subcontractors who did work to meet the quantities of homes and assigned deadlines, even when the conditions were not adequate to perform the tasks.

That is how they documented, for example, roofs repaired in the rain and new cabinets installed in kitchens without a roof.

“But people's biggest annoyance was due to the fact that the way they sold the program created the expectation that they were going to repair the entire house, but they were STEP program funds, which is for making certain specific emergency repairs,” Valdivieso laid out.

Watching for the ghosts

Separately -and without going into details-, Valdivieso said that some time ago her staff had begun to audit the Human Resources area of the Capitol and paid particular attention to the allegations about alleged “ghost employees”.

Those complaints are under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI, by its acronym in English), as the agency itself has acknowledged.

When Valdivieso was asked whether her audit had had any finding, she limited herself to answering: “I can't tell you… I know there have been certain things, regarding staff who are not (working) in San Juan, but who could be in the district offices. I have nothing to report nor that we have made any referral. We are looking at it.”

The Comptroller said she was more struck by the allegations that have arisen in the case against former New Progressive legislator Ramón Rodríguez Ruiz, accused of fraud, in the sense that he allegedly created “ghost” nonprofit organizations in order to receive funds assigned by the Legislative Assembly itself.

“That raises anyone's hair,” she asserted.

Her final stretch

After having been appointed to the position by former governor Luis Fortuño in 2010, Valdivieso's term expires on June 30, 2020.

The law provides that the head of the Office of the Comptroller may continue in the position after his or her term expires until a successor is appointed, as happened with her predecessor, Manuel Díaz Saldaña, who stayed three more years.

But Valdivieso has the impression that the governor will designate someone before that year's general elections. She did not specify what she bases her view on.

“Here, we are on loan… I'm not going to say whether I want to stay. I have to say that it has been a privilege and that, thank God, I have a year left to make sure I met the objectives,” she expressed.

Before that moment arrives, she said she is looking to bring some overdue audits up to date, such as those of municipalities, which by law have to be done every two years, and to add more staff to the workforce, after the agency lost over 130 employees due to fiscal limitations.

Among her satisfactions, she highlighted the creation of the Database Analysis and Digital Forensics Division because she believes it has been a valuable tool in her office's audits and in investigations in collaboration with other agencies.

“Before coming in, I thought about it a lot because, upon arriving here, it is very easy to forget that you come to audit how public funds were used and you can start to criticize public policies,” Valdivieso noted.

“An auditor is not here for that. I can only say that a public policy worked or not if I can prove it through an audit,” she added.