Prov. Council President denies wrongdoing

Providence City Council President Luis Aponte is maintaining that he did nothing wrong amid an investigation by the Attorney General’s Office into whether he broke any campaign finance laws.

"Do you think that you did anything illegal or wrong?"  asked reporter Samantha Fenlon.

"I think the opposite,” said Aponte. “I came to them with what I thought were some issues and worked with them to try and resolve those."

Aponte’s attorney, Artin Coloian, contacted the board in March of 2015 wanting to clear up two issues; outstanding late filing penalties totaling nearly $48,000 and the personal use in 2014 of around $1,700.

This 57-page report by the board shows that the Council President repeatedly used campaign funds to cover every day expenses ranging from liquor store purchases, to Netflix, to ITunes and Stop and Shop.

The report found a discrepancy of almost $14,000.

"We approached the Board of elections 19 months ago about an inadvertent use of funds,” said Coloian. “In an abundance of caution we reimbursed the account in its entirety months ago."

The AG’s office declining comment on the investigation only to say they have received the information.

Aponte saying he does not know much about where that investigation stands.

"I know what I’ve read in the paper. I know that the board voted to send this to the Attorney General review and that’s all I know,” said Aponte.

Mayor Elorza weighing on the situation saying he wants to see this issue taken care of.

"We don’t need this in our city,” said Elorza. “We’ve had this in the past and every time that we feel that we are turning the corner another one of these things come up. He knows this. He needs to clear this up, be transparent. Do what ever he needs to do to make sure that he addresses all of these issues because we can’t have this in the city."

(C) WLNE 2016