The bond issues that led to bankruptcy in Puerto Rico not only served for some ex governors to have a source of mirage cash to help them win elections, but also served to fatten a number of banks' profits with millionaire commissions.

In a report prepared to coincide with the imminent appointment of members of the Fiscal Control Board (FCB) and with the celebration of the First Conference of the PROMESA law today, the ReFund American Project detailed how a series of banks collected astronomical sums in commissions to manage the debt issues of Puerto Rico and how the Law 7 of Fortuño Administration made it possible for these banks to earn even more by allowing them to charge for businesses that previously could not charge.

The report culminates with three recommendations to the Fiscal Control Board: canceling the $ 1.6 billion in interest payments that were capitalized (as well as new debt that was incurred only to pay old debt interest), and give full financing to the Debt Audit Committee, the citizen body created by law that seeks to determine how much of the debt of Puerto Rico is legitimate and how much is illegal.

The authors made their analysis by taking only into account debt issues of the central government, not of public corporations, and starting from what is indicated in the documents themselves of debt issues.

Based on this, they found that the three banks that earned most commissions between 2000 and 2016 in transactions that consisted of issuing new debt to cover old debt were UBS ($ 323 million), Citigroup ($ 302 million) and Goldman Sachs ($ 226 million). Other participating banks were barclays, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers and Banco Popular.

It is not only what these banks charged in commissions, it is also that these commissions were leonine, according to the report, since throughout the United States, the average percentage of commissions in these transactions is 1.02% but in Puerto Rico the average of commissions of banks was 2.68%. In fact, the average commission for Barclay's transactions with Puerto Rico's debt was 3.76% and up to 9.01%.

The authors of the study maintain that this increase of commissions was made possible by Law 7 of the Fortuño Administration, which eliminated the commission ceiling of 2% of the principal used to charge for these transactions. The authors argue that the law also eliminated the requirement that bond transactions, that were to cover old debt, had to produce savings for the government.

The authors estimate that half of the $ 134 billion debt issued by the government and public corporations since 2000 is refinancing debt, or the same as new debt to pay off old debt.

'To close more business and charge more commissions, Wall Street banks began proposing 'kick the can' businesses so they could make money from the same debt several times,' the report said.

'We strongly urged that a complete audit of the debt of the Government of Puerto Rico be made to ensure complete transparency and accountability', they concluded in the document that was advanced to US media and to NotiCel.