Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila was charged Thursday with 19 counts in a campaign finance probe, including conspiracy to violate U.S. federal campaign laws and giving false testimony to the FBI.
The indictment also charged 12 others associated with Acevedo's Popular Democratic Party as a result of a two-year grand jury investigation, acting U.S. Attorney Rosa Emilia Rodriguez said.Acevedo, a superdelegate for the Democratic Party who has pledged to support Sen. Barack Obama, served in Washington as the island's nonvoting delegate to Congress and was elected governor in 2004 after campaigning on an anti-corruption platform.
Acevedo denied any wrongdoing and dismissed the indictment as nothing but politics and "a spectacle designed to damage me."
His written statement did not go into specifics about federal prosecutors' alleged motives. But in the past Acevedo has said U.S. authorities targeted him for his criticism of a September 2005 FBI raid in which a fugitive Puerto Rican militant was killed.
The defendants in Puerto Rico, Washington and the Philadelphia area are accused of conspiring to illegally raise money to pay off Acevedo's campaign debts from his 2000 campaign to be the U.S. island territory's nonvoting member of Congress.
"The governor will be permitted to turn himself in deference to his position," Rodriguez said.
He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted, Rodriguez said. Acevedo said he will turn himself in Friday morning.
