The latest Hedge Clippers report about Puerto Rico’s debt crisis and its Fiscal Control Board (FCB) was published on Wednesday. The report looks into the career of FCB chair José Carrión III. As the report states:
Carrión is well-connected with the Republican Party. He has been an active donor since 2002, and he served as the state network coordinator and chairman of the American territories leadership team for the 2012 presidential campaign of Rick Perry, the former governor of Texas and current Secretary of Energy (it’s worth noting that Perry now oversees the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority, or PREPA). Recently, he’s been a significant donor to House Speaker Paul Ryan, who appointed him to the Oversight Board, and to Rob Bishop, chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, which is authorized to oversee the Oversight Board.
Carrión’s other connections —through his insurance firm, Carrión, Laffitte & Casellas (since 2012, Hub International’s Puerto Rico branch), and his family’s role at Popular, where his father was a member of its board of directors— are well-known. What is less known, and what this reports elaborates on, is that Carrión appears to have used his close ties to key government regulatory agencies to benefit his business partner. Furthermore, former colleagues at his insurance firm sat on the board of the Government Development Bank (GDB) during a key period of debt creation—and as chair of the Oversight Board, he has authority over what forms of legal releases they are granted as former GDB officials.
You can read the entire report here:
