Puerto Rico Senate vice president Carmelo Ríos acknowledged there are gaps in the chamber’s ethics regulations after the Ethics Committee sought a $3,000 fine against independent senator Eliezer Molina for monetizing official Senate broadcasts on his social media, and after the report recommending the sanction was defeated. Ríos clarified that legislators must notify the chamber when they generate income through such videos.
He argued that monetizing legislative videos amounts to extralegislative income and said senators also cannot use employees to record them. Asked whether the regulations expressly bar legislative staff from using employees to create content, Ríos conceded that "there are some gaps there." He said that, in his opinion, Molina and his employees may have violated what could be an ethical matter that needs to be defined, but that the Senate must protect the institution.
Ríos explained that he and the vast majority of his colleagues chose to abstain on the report’s defeat because it was not a matter of retaliation and there was a reasonable gap, so the fair thing was to do what they did.