The Puerto Rico Oversight Board is soliciting questions on its report on the causes and development of the island’s debt crisis, which it released on Aug. 20.
About a week later the board announced that it had formed a Special Claims Committee to “pursue claims from the results” of the debt investigation led by Kobre & Kim.
The committee is holding a public hearing on the report on Sept. 18 in San Juan. It is soliciting questions concerning the report through 5 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 14. Questions can be submitted on the board’s website:
The public hearing will be held at 10 a.m., Sept. 18 in room 201 in the Puerto Rico Convention Center, 100 Bulevar Saint John, San Juan. The hearing will be streamed live on the board’s website and its audio will be available in both English and Spanish. Board members Andrew Biggs, Arthur González, Ana Matosantos, and David Skeel are on the Special Claims Committee.
The debt report includes a section that lays out numerous ways Puerto Rico’s bonds and the steps that led to their issuance may have run afoul of laws and regulations. However, it says that here are laws that bar both private investor actions under U.S. securities law and U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement actions when more than five years have passed since the issuance of the securities.
At this point this includes all Puerto Rico bonds except for the 2014 general obligation bond. The SEC has said, after completing its own investigation, that it won’t be taking enforcement action on the $3.5 billion GO.
