15 Federal charges against Governor dropped

Puerto Rico Governor Aníbal Acevedo Vilá

Judge Paul Barbadoro issued the order addressing twenty-four charges related to Acevedo’s 2000 resident commissioner campaign and his 2004 gubernatorial campaign.

“No point would be served in waiting until the government has presented its evidence to dismiss the false tax return charges because the government concedes that it will not even attempt to prove at trial that Acevedo Vilá’s entries on [tax return] line 22 were false,” Barbadoro said.

Barbadoro also dismissed Counts 26 and 27 of the original case against Acevedo Vilá, but said that the government had a right to “seek alternative charges that more closely conform to its anticipated evidence”.

“Accordingly, a scheme to conceal campaign spending in violation of the spending cap is a scheme to violate Puerto Rican law rather than a scheme to defraud Puerto Rico of its contributions to the Voluntary Fund. Because such a scheme cannot serve as the basis for wire fraud or program fraud prosecution, the charges are defective and must be dismissed,” he said about the charges.

While the two charges related to tax evasion may be filed again if new evidence is submitted by the prosecution, thirteen other charges were dismissed with prejudice by Barbadoro and thus must be dropped from the case permanently.

The removal of the charges was the first good news in some time for the Acevedo Vilá defence team, which was in danger of being disbanded earlier this month due to a lack of funds. ~~Adz:Right~~