AIDS Incorporated.

• Author: TURNER, WAYNE
• Position: AIDS-funding corruption

How federal AIDS money ended up funding psychic hotlines, Neiman Marcus, and flirting classes

"YOU MUST HELP US AGAINST THESE, these THIEVES!' demanded Jose Colon loudly, as a dozen or so members of Congress stared curiously from their dais. This was unusual testimony at an AIDS-funding hearing.

Colons 10-minute address to the U.S. House of Representatives Commerce Subcommittee on Health and Environment last July marked the end of a long, painful journey. Colon, along with countless others, has been fighting for accountability in the use of federal AIDS funds. For him, that fight is deeply personal. Colon is living with AIDS; his partner of 17 years, Aramis, died in 1991, not from AIDS, but from neglect.

Colon, a resident of Puerto Rico, recalled for the committee how Aramis had contracted an opportunistic infection in his lungs and had sought treatment from a federally funded clinic, the San Juan AIDS Institute. Yet, Aramis was never able to get an appointment with his assigned doctor. Eventually, the infection overwhelmed him, and he ended up hospitalized.

Aramis' physician from the Institute, Dr. Jorge Garib, paid just one brief visit to his patient at the hospital, declaring, "You know you have a pneumonia that kills."

Then Dr. Garib abruptly left the hospital room and never returned. Several months later, Aramis died.

On the day Colon presented his testimony, a federal judge in San Juan sentenced Garib to the maximum 10 years in prison for his involvement in an embezzlement scandal at the AIDS clinic that rocked Puerto Rico and sent shock waves all the way to Washington.

During Garib's trial, and the trials of several other Institute officials, prosecutors outlined a paper trail of dummy corporations, off-shore bank accounts, payments for luxury cars, jet skis, cash pay-offs to the Institute's political benefactors, and for Dr. Garib, a personal maid--all using $2.2 million in federal AIDS funds.

Even the governor of Puerto Rico, Pedro Rossello, was twice subpoenaed to testify, though he has not been indicted. A prosecution witness claimed Rossello supervised the transfer of $250,000 in a shoe box from the Institute to support his 1992 election campaign.

Rossello, who decided not to seek re-election, continues to deny involvement in the scandal. Yet prior to his election as governor, Rossello ran the San Juan health department, administering the federal AIDS grants and hand-selecting the very AIDS Institute directors who now stand convicted of fraud.

The San Juan AIDS scandal was many years in the making, but the people responsible for ensuring that AIDS money is well spent did little but sit by and watch. A member of the Puerto Rican legislature, Rep. David Noriega Rodriguez, presented substantial evidence of AIDS fraud in a report to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala in May 1993, but received only a form letter in return.

The feds' indifference continued for years. According to the San Juan Star, Lawrence Poole, an HHS official responsible for monitoring federal funds distributed under the Ryan White CARE Act, admitted under oath in 1999 that his department continually paid millions of dollars to the Institute without ever receiving an accounting or financial report.

It took courthouse vigils in San Juan to force action on behalf of the victims. Colon and Anselmo Fonseca, who also lost his partner to AIDS, together formed Pacientes de SIDA Pro Politica Sana (AIDS Patients for Sane Policies) to demand more accountability in the use of federal AIDS funds for the poor.

At first, they were criticized for drawing attention to the scandal, mostly by employees of other AIDS agencies who feared the scandal could taint their own organizations. Despite political pressure, and even anonymous threats of violence, their numbers grew as more victims of the scandal stepped forward.

For these patients and family members who watched their loved ones die, the five convictions and seven guilty pleas won by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Puerto Rico are little consolation.

The activists attempting to expose such funding abuses in Puerto Rico and elsewhere have been met with stony silence and even outright hostility, mostly from those who are supposed to be their strongest allies in the fight against AIDS.

Their experience shows that after a hard-fought 20 years, the AIDS epidemic has finally become a sacred cow. It is immune from budget cuts; even the Republican-controlled Congress has steadily increased federal AIDS funding, at times well beyond the Clinton administration's request. The Ryan White CARE Act, a $1.7 billion program, was unanimously reauthorized by the 106th Congress last year.

Named 10 years ago in memory of a teenager who died from AIDS, the act was originally conceived to provide emergency relief to low-income people with H1V and AIDS, to provide doctor's visits, medications, food banks...