Puerto Rico's cooperativas accused the island's regulator of using threats to induce them to purchase government bonds – investments that could be worth little as the territory's government teeters on the brink of collapse.

"Credit unions did rely on representations from the government," attorney Jose Sosa-Llorens told CU Times. Sosa-Llorens, a former commissioner for Financial Institutions of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is an attorney representing 25 of the largest cooperativas on the island.

However, in a memo written to the House Natural Resources Committee, Sosa-Llorens went much further, accusing government regulators of threatening punitive taxation if the cooperativas did not purchase government bonds. That memo was written by Sosa-Llorens and Fernando Vinas-Miranda, who is serving as the cooperativas' financial advisor.

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