UK PM Liz Truss’s chief of staff is a witness in FBI bribery probe
- Mark Fullbrook is assisting US authorities in a bribery investigation that led to the arrest of Puerto Rico’s former leader Wanda Vazquez
- Fullbrook helped run the successful campaigns of both Liz Truss and ex-PM Boris Johnson to become Conservative Party leader
A senior member of UK Prime Minster Liz Truss’s government is cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation as part of a bribery investigation that led to the arrest of Puerto Rico’s former leader.
Mark Fullbrook, chief of staff for the new prime minister, is assisting US authorities as a witness and denied a report in the Times of London that he was a subject of the investigation, his spokesman said in a written statement Sunday.
Fullbrook worked for CT Group, a political consultancy that had done opinion research on behalf of the banker that US authorities have charged with bribing Wanda Vazquez, Puerto Rico’s former governor.
“Mark Fullbrook is a witness in this matter and has fully, completely and voluntarily engaged with the US authorities in this matter, as he would always do in any circumstance in which his assistance is sought by authorities,” according to the statement.
Vazquez was arrested in August on charges related to the financing of her failed 2020 re-election campaign, according to a statement from the US Department of Justice. Vazquez allegedly accepted more than US$300,000 from Julio Martin Herrera Velutini, founder of Bancredito International Bank & Trust Corp, and an associate.
In exchange for the funding, she agreed that she would replace a regulator investigating Herrera Velutini’s bank, the Justice Department said.
The payments to Vazquez were allegedly channeled through political consultants and public action committees. Herrera Velutini and Vazquez were both charged with conspiracy, federal programmes bribery and wire fraud and have denied the charges.
Fullbrook became involved with the two when Herrera Velutini hired CT Group to conduct research during Vazquez’s 2020 campaign for reelection.
Fullbrook, who worked at the firm for more than a decade, was CT’s chief global projects officer at the time. CT and Fullbrook never worked directly for the governor or her campaign, his spokesman’s statement said.
“The work was engaged only by Mr Herrera and only to conduct opinion research for him and no one else,” the statement said. “Mr Fullbrook never did any work for, nor presented any research findings to, the Governor or her campaign. There has been no engagement since.”
Fullbrook, 60, helped run the successful campaigns of both Liz Truss and Boris Johnson to become Conservative Party leader.
“Mr Fullbrook understands that there are active legal proceedings against other individuals and entities,” his spokesman said on the FBI investigation. “It would therefore be inappropriate to comment further.”
