# Herrera Velutini Pardon On **January 15, 2026**, [[Donald Trump]] granted full and unconditional pardons to three defendants in one of Puerto Rico's biggest corruption cases: the Venezuelan-Italian banker [[Julio Herrera Velutini]], former governor [[Wanda Vázquez Garced]], and former FBI agent [[Mark Rossini]]. All three had already pleaded guilty and were waiting to be sentenced. The case itself was about money for official action. Prosecutors said the banker paid to have a governor remove the regulator who was examining his bank. Around the pardon, money from the banker's family reached Trump's world through four separate channels. ## The case Herrera Velutini owned Bancrédito International Bank & Trust in San Juan. In 2019, Puerto Rico's Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions (OCIF), the island's bank regulator, began examining it. | Date | What happened | |---|---| | Dec 2019 – Jun 2020 | Herrera Velutini and Rossini, his consultant, allegedly promised to fund Vázquez's 2020 campaign if she removed the OCIF commissioner and appointed someone of the banker's choosing. | | Feb 2020 | Vázquez allegedly demanded the commissioner's resignation. | | May 2020 | She appointed a replacement who had been a consultant for Herrera Velutini's bank. Herrera Velutini and Rossini then allegedly paid more than $300,000 to political consultants supporting her campaign. | | Aug 2020 | Vázquez lost her party's primary to [[Pedro Pierluisi]]. | | Apr – Aug 2021 | Herrera Velutini allegedly made the same kind of offer to her successor, called "Public Official A" in the charges, to end the audit of his bank. The go-between he dealt with was working for the FBI. In August 2021 he allegedly sent $25,000 to a political committee linked to that official. | | Mar 2022 | A campaign consultant and the bank's former CEO pleaded guilty to conspiracy. | | Aug 4, 2022 | Vázquez was arrested. She, Herrera Velutini and Rossini were charged with conspiracy, federal program bribery and honest services wire fraud. Each faced up to 20 years. | | Sep 15, 2023 | [[FinCEN]] fined the bank $15 million for willful [[Bank Secrecy Act]] violations, including failing to report suspicious transactions. | | Jun 16, 2025 | Eleven days after the judge refused to dismiss the case, the defendants reached a deal with the Justice Department. They would each plead guilty to a single misdemeanor, accepting a campaign contribution from a foreign national, and the felony counts would be dropped. | | Aug 27, 2025 | All three pleaded guilty. Prosecutors later asked for a year in prison for Vázquez. | | Jan 15, 2026 | Trump pardoned all three. The grant was announced publicly the next day. | | Jan 20, 2026 | The pardons were amended to cover the misdemeanor cases as well. Rossini was the first to accept. The court dismissed the cases later that month. | [[Chris Kise]], a member of Trump's personal legal team, had joined Herrera Velutini's defense before the deal. The felony counts became one misdemeanor even though Attorney General [[Pam Bondi]]'s February 2025 charging memo told prosecutors to pursue the most serious offense they could readily prove. A former acting head of the department's public corruption unit called the misdemeanor pleas "unusual." No department official has explained the decision. **The White House's reason.** A White House official told reporters Trump saw the case as a political prosecution, and said the investigation began ten days after Vázquez endorsed Trump in October 2020. The bribery conduct alleged in the charges ran from December 2019 to June 2020, before that endorsement. The public record does not show when the investigation opened. Pablo José Hernández, Puerto Rico's representative in Congress, condemned the pardon: "Impunity protects and fosters corruption." ## Four channels of money | Channel | From | To | Amount | Timing | |---|---|---|---|---| | Super PAC | [[Isabela Herrera]], his daughter | [[MAGA Inc]] | $3.5M ($2.5M Dec 2024, $1M Jul 2025) | Before the pardon | | Ballroom | Isabela Herrera | [[White House Ballroom Project]] | $2.5M pledged Sep 2025; $835,000 paid Oct 14, 2025 | Before the pardon | | Job | [[Concord Partners]], her company | [[Alina Habba]] | More than $50M guaranteed over four years, as reported by the *New York Times* | Signed in late 2025; started Jan 1, 2026, weeks before the pardon | | Lobbying | [[Bancredito Holding Corporation]], through Kise's law firm | [[Ballard Partners]] | $630,000 a quarter | Every quarter of 2026 | Each row has its own page: the donations on [[Isabela Herrera]], the job on [[Julio Herrera Velutini]] and [[Alina Habba]], and the lobbying on [[Bancredito-Ballard Partners Lobbying Retainer]]. ## What is alleged, and what is denied None of this shows a deal for the pardon. What the record shows is a sequence. - **The donations.** The [[Campaign Legal Center]] filed a complaint with the [[Federal Election Commission]] in February 2026. It alleges that Isabela Herrera was a straw donor for her father, who as a foreign national cannot legally give to a US election committee. Her only earlier recorded political donation was $20. The complaint had not been resolved as of October 2026. - **The Habba contract.** People familiar with the contract told the *Times* they believed Habba was hired to help with the pardon effort. Habba says any suggestion that her job had anything to do with a pardon is false. The Justice Department says she spoke to no one about a pardon. A White House official says she had nothing to do with it. - **The Herreras** did not respond to requests for comment from the *Times* or the *Washington Post*. After the pardon, Herrera Velutini's lawyer said his client was "deeply grateful" to Trump. ## Why it matters The *Times* describes a "pardon industry" that has grown up in Trump's second term. Defendants pay lawyers, fixers and lobbyists for access, with some fees reported at $1 million. This case is the fullest example the wiki has of [[Pardons as Currency]]. A defendant charged with buying an official's help got a pardon after his family's money went to the president's super PAC, the president's ballroom, the president's former lawyer and the lobbying firm closest to his White House. The pardon was not the end of the story. The bank FinCEN fined for ignoring suspicious transactions involving Venezuelan customers no longer operates. Its holding company has spent 2026 lobbying the Treasury, which enforces those anti-money-laundering rules, on "banking regulatory restrictions and requirements." ## See also - [[Julio Herrera Velutini]] · [[Wanda Vázquez Garced]] · [[Mark Rossini]] · [[Isabela Herrera]] - [[Alina Habba]] · [[Concord Partners]] · [[Chris Kise]] - [[Pardon Power]] · [[Pardons as Currency]] · [[The Pardon and Clemency Pipeline]] · [[Office of the Pardon Attorney]] - [[Bancredito-Ballard Partners Lobbying Retainer]] · [[MAGA Inc]] · [[White House Ballroom Project]] - [[Elite Impunity]]