By The Star Staff
Justice Secretary Domingo Emanuelli Hernández said Tuesday that the Department of Justice has already analyzed the LUMA Energy contract and “if you want to cancel it, you must follow the established processes,” in his opinion.
“We evaluated that contract on November 15, 2022. We have been talking [about this] for almost three years,” Emanuelli Hernández said at a press conference in San Juan. “Oh, and we put it on the [web] page; this is a public report on the Department of Justice page. It has 55 pages. You have to read it to talk [about it]. Those people who are going to refer to the contract, read it and there are answers to all the questions and all the insinuations that we should make and that should not be made. Everything is there.”
The Justice secretary said none of the entities in charge of supervising the consortium that operates the island’s electricity transmission and distribution system have sent any referral to the agency he leads.
“So that you can take a case to court, there [in his opinion] they are told what can happen, but they must bring the evidence,” Emanuelli Hernández said. “If you do not bring me proof, in terms of the people who are investigating or regulating this, that these people complied or are not complying, then there are processes established by the contract that are not as easy as people say. Now, [a complaint] to make it void has not arrived here.”
Regarding who would have to request the investigation and file the documents, Emanuelli Hernandez said it falls to the Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority of Puerto Rico, the Public-Private Partnerships Authority and the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau.
“I have not received any, no complaints,” he said. “If they had the interest and the evidence, surely yes. There is discomfort, there is a lot of discomfort that everyone is feeling. However, in order to void a contract drawn up like this, you must work with caution and intelligence. This is not, ‘oh, I’m going to void a contract because the power went out.’ No, it’s not so easy. It is more complicated than that, but we are willing to handle it.”
Separately on Tuesday, Gov Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia recommended that LUMA express itself on what has become a topic of public theorizing -- that the embattled private consortium behaves as if it wanted to get out of the contract to manage the electricity transmission and distribution system -- if one of its officials is asked the question.
“I think LUMA should be asked directly if that is its feeling, if that is … what it wants to do,” the governor said at a press conference for the reconstruction of the Punta Lima Ecological Park, a wind farm in Naguabo.
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