AIDS Institute trial press 05/19/99
Kouri trial 05/19/99
Second article
"They had their spectacle. Now the people who have tried to unscrupulously link me to this process will have to apologize."
Gov. Rossello
after testifying in the San Juan AIDS Institute case
Feliciano unable to say if funds were mismanaged
By MARTY GERARD DELFIN
Of the STAR Staff
Health Secretary Carmen Feliciano told a federal court jury Tuesday that she cannot answer
whether federal funds were mismanaged at the San Juan AIDS Institute during the time she
worked there in the early 1990s.
At the same time, Feliciano testified that she has never heard Gov. Rossello ask for money for
the New Progressive Party. Feliciano was the 18th witness called to testify by Yamil Kouri's defense team in the San Juan AIDS Institute trial.
Former Mayor Hector Luis Acevedo is expected to testify today. Kouri will take the stand in his own defense in the next few days, his lawyers announced.
The trial is expected to last three more weeks.
Defense lawyers for co-defendants Jeannette Sotomayor and Armando Borel said they expected to take a week to present their witnesses, and prosecutors another week for the rebuttal.
The trial in the $1.4 million embezzlement case against the three enters its 42nd day today.
Feliciano, who arrived at the federal courthouse after Rossello testified, specifically referred to a meeting that allegedly occurred either in late 1991 or early 1992 at NPP headquarters.
Angel Corcino Mauras, the former AIDS Institute comptroller and government's star witness, said that Kouri ordered him to launder money for donations to the NPP 1992 campaign. Corcino said that he saw Feliciano off to the side in a conference room when he overheard Rossello tell lawyer Luis Dubon Otero to raise $250,000.
"I have never heard Dr. Rossello asking for money in that place or any other place in the world," Feliciano testified in English.
Between 1990 and 1993, Feliciano worked at the institute's ambulatory services unit as a consultant.
Questioned by defense lawyer Charles Daniels, she said that Kouri, who was coordinator, "gave advice in a very convincing way." But she said he never ordered her as other government witnesses have testified to the defendant's demeanor.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Maria Dominguez established, by questioning the witness, that Feliciano would have no way of knowing about mismanagement because she wasn't involved in the day-to-day operations at the institute.
Francisco Rebollo Casalduc, lawyer for co-defendant Sotomayor, got Feliciano to acknowledge that his client was a hard worker. He introduced into evidence a photograph of institute employees including Sotomayor and Feliciano with a dedication written by the health secretary thanking the defendant for her "dedication and f time."
But Dominguez asked Feliciano whether she believed that a job well-done in public service is an excuse to steal money. The health secretary said she couldn't answer in Sotomayor's case, but she has seen public servants do wrong things.
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