Senate reviewing report on investigation into family secretary.

By THE STAR STAFF

Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz stated on Tuesday that he is reviewing the Department of Justice’s report on an investigation involving the Family Secretary Suzanne Roig Fuertes.

“If you have a file containing sworn statements, documentary evidence, testimony, and information that -- according to the prosecutor -- exonerates the family secretary, why not turn it over?” Rivera Schatz asked during a press conference.

The Senate president said he had requested the report from the Department of Justice and that, following initial resistance, Justice Secretary Lourdes Gómez Torres sent it to the Senate.

“I immediately handed it over to my colleagues -- and by ‘colleagues,’ I mean all the senators -- because this was a formal request made on behalf of the Senate of Puerto Rico,” Rivera Schatz said.

He noted that all senators, across all delegations, have the right to examine the document, and that the Senate will verify its contents.

The Senate president noted that the case originated in 2021, when then-Health Secretary Carlos Mellado López identified a potentially irregular situation.

“Before referring the matter, an attorney named Verdiale -- Miguel Verdiale -- conducted a thoroughly documented investigation, complete with sworn statements and all the trimmings,” he pointed out.

Rivera Schatz said the case file was forwarded to the Department of Justice, and that in October 2025, a prosecutor determined that no crime had been committed.

“That is the opinion of that specific prosecutor -- of that individual, that representative of the Department of Justice -- regarding what they observed in that file,” he noted. “They could be right, or they could be wrong.”