Abel Nazario Quiñones (born 24 June 1970) is former senator at large of the 26th Senate of Puerto Rico and was mayor of

Yauco, Puerto Rico Yauco () is a town and municipality in southern Puerto Rico. Although the downtown is inland, the municipality stretches to a southern coast facing the Caribbean Sea. Yauco is located south of Maricao, Lares and Adjuntas; east of Sabana Grande ...

. He was first elected in

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...

representing the New Progressive Party (PNP). He was reelected in 2004 , 2008 and 2012. Nazario is also the vice president of the PNP and also for the local Republican Party. He was arrested on 12 September 2018 by the FBI for illegal appropriation of federal funds.

Political career

Prior to serving as mayor, Nazario served as staff director of the

Senate of Puerto Rico The Senate of Puerto Rico ( es, Senado de Puerto Rico) is the upper house of the Legislative Assembly of Puerto Rico, the territorial legislature of Puerto Rico. The Senate, together with the House of Representatives of Puerto Rico, control t ...

Committee on Tourism, chaired by then-senator

Enrique Rodríguez Negrón Enrique Rodríguez Negrón (born July 14, 1933 in Toa Alta, Puerto Rico) served as a member of the Senate of Puerto Rico from 1989 to 2001. From 1993 to 2001, he chaired the Senate Tourism Committee and partnered with then Executive Director of t ...

. As such, he was instrumental in the passage of most of the bills in then executive director of the Puerto Rico Tourism Company

Luis Fortuño Luis Guillermo Fortuño Burset (born 31 October 1960) is a Puerto Rican politician who served as the governor of Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States, from 2009 to 2013. Fortuño served as the first secretary of econom ...

's legislative agenda, including a new Casino Law. Fortuño later on became Governor of Puerto Rico in 2008 in what was the biggest margin of any election in Puerto Rico. On his actual working days, Abel Nazario is known for being one of the many mayors to reduce his salary from $3,000 (2012 amount) to $1,500 (actual salary). He also had other sources of income, including professor of the University of North East (UNE), etc. He succeeded as senator-at-large in the 2016 General Election. As of 2017, he is the president of the Senate of Puerto Ricos Committee on Education and University Reform, Education and University Reform.

Arrest and conviction

On 12 September 2018, Senator Nazario was arrested at 6 a.m. by FBI agents as part of an ongoing investigation into misuse of public funds and corruption. After his release from custody while awaiting trial the Senator organized fundraising activities for his legal defense. On March 21, 2020, he was found guilty on 28 of the 31 charges against him. In 2021 he was sentenced to a 18 months in prison and ordered to pay his victims, municipal employees, compensation.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nazario, Abel Interamerican University of Puerto Rico alumni Mayors of places in Puerto Rico Living people People from Yauco, Puerto Rico Republican Party (Puerto Rico) politicians 1970 births