Lifetime Citizen Portal Access — AI Briefings, Alerts & Unlimited Follows
AEE and APP tell committee Luma’s management and documentation, not government deposits, are the main problem
Loading...
Summary
AEE and APP officials told lawmakers the government provided initial seed funding when Luma began operations and said the principal problem is Luma’s execution, documentation and low federal-reimbursement rates, not a deliberate withholding of cash by the AEE.
Officials from the Autoridad de Energía Eléctrica and the Authority for Public–Private Partnerships told the House committee that Luma’s execution and documentation failures — not solely AEE deposits — explain the system’s cash problems.
Maricarmen Zapata Acosta, AEE executive director, recounted how the government provided an initial pool of funds when Luma began operations on June 1, 2021 and explained the six “service” accounts established under the Operation and Maintenance Agreement (OMA) that feed operations and capital projects. Zapata said AEE retains custody of the billing receipts and described the normal monthly authorization process by which the AEE evaluates Luma’s and Genera’s transfer requests against the cash balance and approved budget.
“Al primero de junio de 2021 estas cuentas... tenían los siguientes balances,” Zapata told the panel and then listed the balances Luma inherited (operational: about $239,921,877; capital—federal: about $243,887,036; capital—nonfederal: about $46,538,060; event reserve: $30,000,000; purchase-of-energy: $181,166,667; fuel: $127,833,333), a combined total she described as approximately $873 million.
Josué Colón Ortiz (APP) characterized Luma’s record differently: APP and AEE documents and consultant findings show Luma has exceeded approved operation and maintenance budgets by hundreds of millions of dollars and has poor records supporting federal-reimbursement claims. Colón told the committee that Luma reported spending more than $2 billion on federally funded projects between June 2021 and September 2025 but had obtained only about $441 million in reimbursements, a shortfall that APP and AEE say reflects deficient execution, not an AEE cash-withholding strategy.
Colón and Zapata said audit completion has been hampered by incomplete or inconsistent data, that the audited financial statements for 2023 remain incomplete because information requested from Luma is pending, and that APP and AEE have repeatedly asked Luma for itemized accounts-payable and project documentation. APP staff said an independent consultant (name provided in their submission) worked for the fiscal board and that the consultant’s report should be requested from the fiscal board if the committee wants that analysis.
Both AEE and APP expressed willingness to provide the bank-account documentation the committee ordered and asked the committee to require Luma to deliver its missing documentation so the panel can reconcile deposits, transfers and project reimbursements.
