Former PREPA director says she signed Power Expectations contract without knowing of irregularities
By THE STAR STAFF
Former Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) executive director Mary Carmen Zapata Acosta told lawmakers on Monday that she signed the controversial Power Expectations emergency generation contract without knowing that signatures from members of the consortium were allegedly invalid or unauthorized.
Zapata Acosta’s testimony came during a public hearing before the Government Committee in the island House of Representatives, which is investigating the failed procurement process that led to the cancellation of the $5 billion agreement for 400 megawatts of temporary energy.
Zapata Acosta said she executed the contract late on June 10 of this year, only after it had received approvals from PREPA’s governing board, the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau, the Financial Oversight and Management Board, and PREPA’s legal division. She insisted that at the time of signing, she had no knowledge of any concerns regarding the authenticity of the signatures submitted by the companies that composed the Power Expectations consortium.
She also testified that PREPA was largely excluded from critical early stages of the procurement process. According to her account, the utility did not participate in drafting the request for proposals (RFP) for temporary generation and received the final RFP less than an hour before its publication. She said PREPA “was not included in the elaboration of the RFP and did not have a reasonable opportunity to review it before publication.”
Zapata Acosta told lawmakers that PREPA first learned on June 17 that the Third‑Party Procurement Office (3PPO) was evaluating a request to replace Enchanted Rock with Flowtech as a consortium partner. She said documents showed Power Expectations had already signed a substitution agreement on June 12 without PREPA’s prior authorization. She later signed PREPA’s consent to the substitution on July 31, after the company formally submitted the request and the 3PPO issued a favorable recommendation.
The former director said she only became aware of a dispute between Enchanted Rock and Power Expectations on Aug. 7, when she received questions from a television program. She testified that both the Public‑Private Partnerships Authority and the 3PPO had information about the controversy since mid‑June, but neither she nor PREPA’s legal counsel had been informed.
After the oversight board withdrew its approval of the contract and PREPA identified issues related to the performance bond, the utility terminated the agreement on Aug. 18. Zapata Acosta said that between Sept. 1 and Sept. 2 PREPA referred matters related to the controversy to multiple agencies, including the Department of Justice, the Office of the Comptroller, the Office of the Inspector General, the Office of Government Ethics, the General Services Administration, the FBI and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
She concluded her testimony by stating that PREPA addressed each issue as quickly as possible, despite not having been informed of key developments earlier in the process.
“We had no way of addressing matters we did not know existed,” she said.
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