Puerto Rico

PUERTO RICO The Supreme Court of Puerto Rico refused a formal plea by the newspaper El Vocero to make Comptroller Ileana Colon Carlo hand-over documents related to an audit by her office of expenses for overseas trips made by former governor Rafael Hernandez Colon in the last four years. The Supreme Court ruled that the newspaper's right to access to information "does not give it the right to force the respondent to hand over information that did not exist in the context of the limited audit made by the comptroller's office." In a dissenting opinion, Judge Antonio Negron Garcia said that El Vocero editor and owner Gaspar Roca had the right to demand the documents, since the Court had established that "newspaper owners and editors have a special interest that allows them to represent the press in the courts and to invoke privileges in its favor."