Venezuelan banker Julio Herrera Velutini obtained a presidential pardon from Donald Trump, which also benefited former Puerto Rico governor Wanda Vázquez Garced, after his daughter Isabela Herrera granted a $50 million contract to Alina Habba, then an adviser to the US Department of Justice and a former personal lawyer of Trump, The New York Times reported Tuesday. Under the agreement, Habba would become general counsel of Concord Partners, a Florida company Isabela Herrera created in October 2025, two months earlier.
Habba would receive $10 million annually for four years, over $50 million including bonuses. The deal was finalized after the company was registered in Florida while Habba still led the federal prosecutors’ office in New Jersey and advised then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. She resigned the Justice Department advisory post in December 2025 and began working for Concord Partners on January 1; fifteen days later, Trump began issuing pardons.
Habba denied any connection: any insinuation that her employment, which was disclosed to the Justice Department, had to do with obtaining a pardon is false, she said in a statement to the newspaper. Herrera Velutini had been charged with Vázquez Garced and former FBI agent Mark Rossini in a bribery scheme to benefit the governor’s PNP primary campaign in summer 2020, involving removal of the then head of the island’s Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions, George Joyner.
Isabela Herrera, a US citizen, donated $1 million to MAGA, Inc. in December 2024 and $2.5 million to the White House ballroom; the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC alleging she acted on her father’s behalf.