Eduardo Soria Rivera, executive director of COR3, and Comptroller Carmen Vega Fournier highlighted the benefits of the initiative. Rocío Fernández / EL VOCERO
The Office of Recovery, Reconstruction and Resilience (COR3) and the Office of the Comptroller signed a collaborative agreement yesterday to strengthen mechanisms that prevent and/or detect fraud in the management of reconstruction funds by government agencies, municipalities and nonprofit entities.
According to the executive director of COR3, Eduardo Soria Rivera, between 2021 and 2025 the agency submitted 106 reports to various entities such as the federal Office of the Inspector General (OIG) about irregularities in the management of money intended to address the damage caused by Hurricanes Irma and María in 2017, the 2020 earthquakes and Hurricane Fiona in 2022.
“We are now basically in the contracting stage; therefore, the schemes of fraud, waste or abuse being seen have to do with bidding, conflict of interest or two or more contractors that collude within a process. When we advance to the construction stage, the frauds, these schemes change and include false certifications and improper use of materials,” the official warned.
Soria Rivera stressed that, from COR3's point of view, “a lot of fraud occurs” in reconstruction processes; however, many are detected before they have greater consequences.
“When we realize there is fraud, we do not pay. It's not that it (the fraud) is not there, it's that we prevent it with the controls we have,” he maintained.
Precisely, in light of the request by Governor Jenniffer González Colón to make the processes related to the disbursement of reconstruction funds more flexible, the executive director stressed the need for compensating controls.
“If I am going to make the disbursement more flexible, on the other side I have to audit and be more vigilant, so we are going to reinforce those areas together with the Office of the Comptroller,” Soria Rivera emphasized.
The collaborative agreement will include trainings between both entities, so that the more than 400 auditors of the Office of the Comptroller expand their knowledge about the management of federal funds, while COR3 personnel learn about municipal finances and other governmental matters.
“With this agreement we are fostering an electronic integration of the databases and it is something we also want to do with the municipalities and agencies,” the Comptroller, Carmen Vega Fournier, highlighted for her part.
The official emphasized that the shared-access system will include official information, audits, contract registries, financial data and reports linked to the use of funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other federal agencies, in order to reinforce transparency, accountability and the prevention of fraud, abuse or poor public administration.
On another front, the Comptroller looked favorably on two proposals presented by the executive director of COR3, so that nonprofit entities have to submit contracts to the Office of the Comptroller's database and that the Registry of Contracts of the latter agency include information about subcontracts.
“We know that many problems are there. We are going to do a joint effort with the Comptroller so that there is more visibility of who the reconstruction subcontractors are, because that is where the conflicts are that one often does not see until we have the contract in front of us,” Soria Rivera said.
In that regard, Vega Fournier revealed that COR3 has a draft for a legislative bill in order to enable both proposals.
“We are going to evaluate it (the bill) and I hope that by the beginning of next year (2026) this is finalized,” the Comptroller added.
New agreements loom. Similarly, COR3 also has on its agenda establishing collaborative agreements with the Police and the Department of Justice in order to encourage citizens to also collaborate with oversight efforts.
“What we want with this is for people to file their complaints and tell us ‘I saw that in this FEMA project they took the digger to the house of the Public Works guy.' We want to know that, but we all have to be on the same page to make it easier for people to file reports,” the executive director proclaimed.
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