Julio M. Herrera Velutini

Julio M. Herrera Velutini, a Venezuelan-born billionaire banker with banking interests in Puerto Rico, was charged in a scheme to bribe then-Puerto Rico Governor Wanda Vázquez Garced in exchange for government action to remove and replace the island's top banking regulator. Beginning in 2019, while one of Herrera Velutini's banks was under examination by Puerto Rico's Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions (OCIF), he and former FBI agent Mark Rossini offered to fund Vázquez Garced's 2020 gubernatorial campaign in exchange for her firing the OCIF commissioner and installing a replacement favorable to Herrera Velutini. The governor accepted, demanded the commissioner's resignation in February 2020, and appointed a former consultant for Herrera Velutini's bank as his replacement three months later. All three defendants were indicted in 2022 on seven felony counts including conspiracy, federal program bribery, and honest services wire fraud. In mid-2025, the DOJ allowed the defendants to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor — accepting a pledge of campaign contributions from a foreign national — a deal the presiding judge described as "a slap on the wrist." Herrera Velutini was pardoned on January 15, 2026, before sentencing, and the case was dismissed in its entirety on January 27, 2026.