Ms. Vázquez, 62, was arrested at her home after the grand jury indicted her. The donor, Julio M. Herrera Velutini — a Venezuelan banker mired in regulatory trouble in Puerto Rico — was also charged. Mr. Herrera, 50, owns Bancrédito, an international bank that has come under scrutiny from Puerto Rico regulators for suspicious banking transactions. According to the Justice Department, Mr. Herrera wanted the island’s top banking regulator replaced and in exchange offered to pay $300,000 to political consultants working on the governor’s campaign. Ms. Vázquez, who was facing re-election at the time, agreed to the plan, said W. Stephen Muldrow, the United States attorney for Puerto Rico, adding that Mr. Herrera then formed a political action committee for Ms. Vázquez. The 42-page grand jury indictment describes meetings and text messages that purport to show the nature of the deal. The governor consummated the deal, forcing the incumbent banking commissioner to resign and installing his handpicked Mr. Herrera as the new commissioner, according to the indictment. To mask the “illegal and corrupt purpose of the bribes,” Mr. Herrera’s payments were funneled through Mark T. Rossini, who served as Mr. Herrera’s counsel and is accused of facilitating the settlement, the Justice Department said. Mr. Rossini, 60, is a former FBI supervisory agent who, before the Sept. 11 attacks, was assigned to a CIA task force investigating al-Qaida but was criminally charged with illegally conducting unauthorized searches of a government computer. After pleading guilty to those charges, he paid a fine and served community service and a year of probation. The former governor, the banker and the former federal agent were each charged with conspiracy, federal program bribery and honest services fraud and could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted, Mr. Multrow said. Two other people involved in the bribery scheme — the bank’s chairman and one of Ms Vasquez’s campaign advisers — pleaded guilty to conspiracy and face up to five years in prison. Ms. Vázquez spoke to reporters Thursday outside federal court in San Juan, where she was released on $50,000 bail. Usually put together in style when out in public, Ms Vazquez looked like someone who had rolled out of bed. “I repeat to the people and to all of you: I am innocent,” Ms Vázquez said. “I have not committed any crime or any irregularity. Now it’s up to me to defend myself. I assure you that they have committed a great injustice against me.” Her lawyer, Luis Plaza, noted that she was not charged with personally receiving bribe money. “Not even the indictment alleges that one cent was enriched,” Mr. Plaza said. The former governor’s arrest coincides with a wave of unrelated public corruption cases on the island, including the arrests of nine mayors so far this year. Ms. Vázquez was the Commonwealth’s top attorney in 2019 when mass protests ousted Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló from office. The island has no lieutenant governor and the top post in the line of succession, foreign minister, was vacant at the time, so Mr. Rosselló’s resignation unexpectedly catapulted Ms. Vázquez to the governorship. A Republican and member of the island’s pro-democracy party, she served for less than two years, completing Mr. Rosselló’s term, but lost her bid for re-election when she was defeated in a 2020 primary. Federal prosecutors said that when Ms. Vázquez lost the primary, Mr. Herrera tried to bribe the winner — the current governor, Pedro R. Pierluisi. But the person representing Mr. Pierluisi in the scheme was actually working undercover for the FBI In May, Ms. Vázquez gathered reporters at the office of her lawyer, Mr. Plaza, to announce that she was under investigation. He described the investigation at the time as a “technical” issue that would be fought out in court. “We will fight for it and we will win,” Mr. Plaza, a former prosecutor, said in May. In November 2018, when she was the island’s justice minister, Ms. Vázquez faced allegations that she had improperly intervened on behalf of her daughter and son-in-law in a case of theft from their residence. Ms Vázquez was briefly suspended from her post as the investigation unfolded. But she was later cleared of any ethics violations in the case by a judge who said there was insufficient evidence against her. Before becoming attorney general, Ms. Vázquez headed Puerto Rico’s women’s affairs office, where she often clashed with women’s advocacy groups who said she was not doing enough to combat domestic violence. On Thursday, federal prosecutors said Mr. Herrera was in London and Mr. Rossini in Spain and that efforts would be made to extradite them. Attempts to reach Mr. Rossini for comment were unsuccessful. Luis Delgado, Mr. Herrera’s lawyer, said his client denied the allegations detailed in the indictment. “They were fake. There were no campaign contributions as claimed,” Mr. Delgado said. “We look forward to facing them in a court of law.” The bank owned by Mr Herrera released a statement saying he had resigned as chairman and board member. “The bank continues to operate as normal and to work closely and cooperatively with Puerto Rico’s federal banking authorities and federal banking authorities,” said Gregorio D’Andrea, chief operating officer. Corey R. Amundson, head of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Division, said the case was one of a string of recent corruption cases across the country, including in Ohio, Illinois and North Carolina, involving businessmen. “We cannot and will not turn a blind eye to a critical role played by corrupt members of the business world who make this corruption possible and provide the opportunities,” he told a news conference in San Juan on Thursday. “They must be held accountable and they will be held accountable.” Gov. Pierluisi said Thursday that his predecessor’s arrest showed that “no one is above the law in Puerto Rico.” Although Mr. Multrow has repeatedly emphasized that the current governor has not been charged with any crimes, Mr. Pierluisi’s campaign has faced its own legal problems. The chairman and treasurer of a political action committee that raised money for Mr. Pierluisi’s campaign pleaded guilty in May to a scheme to conceal the origin of “dark money,” the US attorney’s office said. The governor denied any connection to the PAC. Another former governor of Puerto Rico, Aníbal Acevedo Vila, was acquitted of federal corruption charges in “Corruption is not a victimless crime,” said Joseph González, the special agent in charge of the FBI in Puerto Rico. “The victim is the people of Puerto Rico.”
