By , Associated Press | March 27, 2008
SAN JUAN — The governor of Puerto Rico, Anibal Acevedo Vila, was charged today with 19 counts in a campaign finance probe, including conspiracy to violate American federal campaign laws and giving false testimony to the FBI.
The indictment also charged 12 others associated with Mr. Acevedo's Popular Democratic Party as a result of a two-year grand jury investigation, the acting U.S. attorney, Rosa Emilia Rodriguez, said.
Mr. Acevedo, a superdelegate for the Democratic Party who has pledged to support Senator Obama, served in Washington as the island's nonvoting delegate to Congress and was elected governor in 2004 after campaigning on an anti-corruption platform.
Mr. Acevedo dismissed the indictment as nothing but politics and "a spectacle designed to damage me."
His written statement did not go into specifics about federal prosecutors' alleged motives. But in the past Mr. Acevedo has said American authorities targeted him for his criticism of a September 2005 FBI raid in which a fugitive Puerto Rican militant was killed.
The defendants in Puerto Rico, Washington, and the Philadelphia area are accused of conspiring to illegally raise money to pay off Mr. Acevedo's campaign debts from his 2000 campaign to be the American island territory's nonvoting member of Congress.
"The governor will be permitted to turn himself in deference to his position," Ms. Rodriguez said.
He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, Ms. Rodriguez said. Mr. Acevedo said he will turn himself in tomorrow morning.
At least five others named in the indictment were led in handcuffs into the American federal building in San Juan early this morning.
A Washington-based attorney for Mr. Acevedo, Thomas Green, said he had not yet reviewed the charges but criticized the election-year indictment as "an unprecedented and undeserved intrusion by the federal government" in Puerto Rican affairs.
Mr. Acevedo's claims of persecution have support in Puerto Rico, where many feel a deep-rooted nationalism and hostility toward the American federal government.
Mr. Acevedo, 46, and his associates are accused of conducting unreported fundraising to far exceed funding limits during his 2004 campaign for governor. As part of the fraud, they allegedly used their own or their companies' money to cover unreported debts to the campaign's public relations company.
The 55-page indictment alleges that Mr. Acevedo also personally helped a group of Philadelphia-area businessmen in their efforts to obtain Puerto Rican government contracts after they delivered illegal campaign contributions from their own staff and family members.
Mr. Acevedo's party favors maintaining the island's semiautonomous relationship with the American mainland. His leading opponent in this year's governor's race favors making Puerto Rico the 51st state.
