The Department of Justice has arrested the person the Federal Emergency Management Agency ( FEMA ) put in direction of Hurricane Maria recuperation in Puerto Rico along with two others on charges of committing calamity put-on . The cause centers around dupery bond to more than $ 1.8 billion that FEMA award to individual contractor Cobra Acquisitions Energy to facilitate repair Puerto Rico ’s electric grid after Hurricane Maria tore it apart two geezerhood ago this calendar month .
The declaration comes aftera year of investigatingthe Oklahoma - ground company . Really , though , this all stretch back almost two years now . Barely a month after the hurricane hit , the Federal Bureau of Investigationbegan to investigatesome of the contracts grant to private contractor for tragedy recovery . The focus then was on Whitefish Energy , a small energy house from Montana that had close ties with then - Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke ( recall him ? ) . But charges against Ahsha Tribble , the FEMA functionary that was in mission of Maria recovery , as well as former FEMA deputy chief of stave Jovanda Patterson , and former Cobra President Donald Ellison are the first to come of either probe .
Keep in creative thinker : These are taxpayer dollars meant to assist restore world power to the island after Hurricane Maria left it devastated and people in need of assistance .
Cobra Energy was supposed to help restore power on the island after Hurricane Maria.Photo: Getty
Now , Ellison , Tribble , and Patterson present a combined 15 numeration for a identification number of crimes that may set ashore them behind bars for up to 35 year . That does n’t feel like nearly enough time for mortal that might ’ve helped exasperate an already - messed up recuperation effort on the part of the federal governance .
“ These defendant were supposed to come to Puerto Rico to avail during the recovery after the devastation suffered from Hurricane María , ” U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodríguez - Vélez said in a insistence release e-mail to Earther . “ Instead , they decided to take reward of the precarious atmospheric condition of our electrical power control grid and affiance in a graft and honest services wire shammer scheme to enrich themselves illegally . ”
Some Puerto Ricans spent month without superpower after the hurricane . In fact , the island ’s blackout was thesecond - longestthe world has ever see . No power is about more than hold out in the darkness : The tempest was thedeadliest in modern U.S. history . That ’s , in part , due to deficiency of refrigeration for people who need it to keep drugs like insulin cool down .
These indictments and halt bring a bit of justice to a universe that has n’t seen nearly enough , but they still have to be tried in court of law . DoJ will come only with a shamefaced finding of fact — and , even then , no lawcourt opinion will efface the calendar month of darkness or rejoin thenearly 3,000 life lost .
FEMA
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