Puerto Rico Senator Juan Oscar Morales Rodríguez filed a referral on Thursday with the Office of Government Ethics (OEG) asking for an investigation into alleged irregularities in the awarding of a $355,646.50 Puerto Rico Family Department contract to SAMU Foundation Corp. The contract, number 2026-000177, is for the Peer Mentoring Project. The referral questions how proposals were evaluated and selected, and raises possible conflicts of interest tied to an official trip Family secretary Suzanne Roig Fuertes made to Spain in September 2025, with $14,542.95 in state funds approved for it.
Among the expenses identified are three lunches held between September 9 and 11, costing $1,494.81 together. According to the document, 10 entities competed for the contract. Morales argues the evaluation may have harmed a Puerto Rican company and favored SAMU.
He had earlier told Telenoticias that not all bidders were scored under the same criteria: nine proposals were scored by three different evaluators, while one was evaluated by only two, which he said put it at a disadvantage. The senator contended that if that proposal had received an additional score similar to the average given by the other evaluators, it could have surpassed SAMU Foundation and changed the outcome of the award.