The move comes after the contract awarded to Veintinueve de Febrero Inc. was challenged in court.
The Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB) has thrown a $14.9 million Electronic Lottery marketing contract back into competition, ordering Treasury to rebid the deal after transparency concerns and a pending legal challenge clouded the award.
In its August 7 letter, the Board said Treasury must run a new procurement cycle “that promotes market competition and transparency,” maintain a full evaluation record, and submit any resulting contract for review before execution. To ensure compliance, the Board is limiting the renewal to a 90‑day term, far shorter than the one‑year agreement Treasury sought, and requiring a proportional reduction in the contract’s maximum payable amount.
The Board’s intervention is rooted in concerns over how Treasury awarded the original contract in 2025. Under the RFQ issued May 21 of that year, Treasury evaluated seven proponents and qualified three. The Evaluation Committee recommended awarding the contract to the highest‑scoring proponent, but the Treasury Secretary instead selected Veintinueve de Febrero, Inc., the lowest‑scoring bidder. The Oversight Board requested documentation explaining the Secretary’s rationale; none was provided.
The controversy deepened when an unsuccessful proponent, Digimedia, filed a complaint in December 2025 seeking to invalidate the RFQ. According to the Oversight Board, the bidder is asking the Puerto Rico Court of First Instance to declare the RFQ “null and void for lack of proper notification of the PRDT’s award determination to the participating proponents. Digimedia served as the Treasury Department’s advertising agency from 2019 to 2021 and then again from 2022 through August 2025. The case remains pending, adding legal uncertainty to the procurement process.
The Board also noted that Treasury amended its internal procurement manual on the same day the RFQ was issued, changes the agency described as “substantive modifications” to align the process with RFQs. Under PROMESA, such amendments should have been submitted to the Board for review.
These issues led the Board in June to halt review of a proposed second amendment that would have raised the contract’s value to $11.88 million. When the Office of Management and Budget later submitted a full renewal for FY2027, the Board reiterated that it “could not determine whether the process resulting in Contract 2026‑000178 and its proposed second amendment promoted market competition.”
The newly proposed $14.9 million contract would run through June 30, 2027 and be funded through General and Special Revenue Funds. Treasury certified that sufficient FY2027 budget exists to cover the cost, though the Board noted that any overspending would require reprogramming.
