I analyzed the Soros Open Society Foundation hack by DCLeaks collective and bumped into a February 2016 plan by Soros to “take over” Puerto Rico by influencing and possibly bribing Republican congressmen and manipulate the media in favor of a rescue. I suspect that Soros’ funds were heavily involved in investing in Puerto Rican Municipal bonds ahead of the Open Society Foundation lobbying efforts to influence US Congress over a bailout, which was duly passed later in the year.

This is a text book case study on how powerful and non accountable individuals and institutions use their financial and political power to influence politicians to promote their interests and personal personal enrichment.

To view the full document, type on your browser soros.dcleaks.com/ and search for a document called: “Open Society US Programs Board Meeting” in New Work dated February 11 2016 (pages 15-17).

Soros has been running the Open Society Foundation for years with the aim of promoting humanitarian causes, reduce his tax bill and most likely gain influence in internal and external policy circles.

Among the topics discussed in this symposium we had noble causes like:

· Addressing economic inequality with a special focus on African-Americans
· Reforms to childcare policy
· Regulation of campaign funding in US political elections
· US police reform
· How to solve the Puerto Rico debt crisis.

This latest topic seemed to be particularly dear to Soros as was presented by his son Alex and Chris Canavan, Director of Global Policy for Soros fund.

The steering committee was joined by other members of the Soros fund and >stated their goals of:

· Identify and refine a solution to the debt issue of Puerto Rico.
· Support the development of a long term plan
· Increase the capacity of Puerto Rican civil society

Alex Soros recognized that the crisis of Puerto Rico led to rising poverty and unemployment, austerity budget cuts and emigration of thousands of Puerto Ricans. The government of Puerto Rico had also defaulted two times on non-general obligation bonds and was on its pathway to run out of money to provide inmates with food and police officers with gas for their patrol cars.

President Obama had called for legislative reform to allow Puerto Rico to file for Chapter 9 (bankruptcy protection), but a conservative Congress made this difficult to pass.

The solutions envisaged by Soros were:

· Push a legislative solution in Washington for advocating for Chapter 9 for Puerto Rico identifying Republican lobbyists to increase their presence in this debate.

· Advance a communications narrative of order versus chaos to reframe the debate. To this end Soros foundation contracted a PR agency to build a communications campaign to target Republican audiences ‘inside the Beltway’ and push a new message that positions the debate as Order vs. Chaos in order to avoid chaos, Congress would need to provide Puerto Rico with an orderly way to restructure its debt. They would also create a media relations center to serve Washington DC and develop a marketing campaign to persuade targets in Washington DC. That campaign would explain what would happen if a common sense debt deal would not be adopted and position the deal not as a bailout at the expense of the tax payer, but rather as a win/win. The campaign would begin with original content development and the identification and recruitment of spokespeople, such as conservative academicians, journalist and others that have influence in Republican spheres. This would include a full time communication specialist with social media expertise and at the same time find media partners who would help humanize the crisis.

· Develop a long-term economic growth plan for Puerto Rico. Soros would commit funds to undertake a project with Joseph Stiglitz at Columbia University and other economists at the Brookings Institute, Brown University and the McKinsey Global Institute to develop a long-term industrial plan.

· Examining the viability of building influence of Puerto Ricans. To do that, Soros invested $20,000 in a poll that would shed light on views of Puerto Rican voters in Florida, the candidates which they align and the message tactics that woull lead them to vote in November 2016. Earlier surveys indicated that Puerto Ricans in Florida believed that the cause of the crisis is predominantly on the hands of the politicians in Puerto Rico. They believed that any help from the US needed to come hand in hand with some form of consequences for Puerto Rican politicians who had misused public funds. Most of these residents had family members still living in the island and believed that Puerto Rican identity to be central to their values. Most believed that registering to vote would be a way to express their ‘US citizenship’ so new arrivals really believed in the need to register to vote.

Soros’ efforts paid out with the Congress passing a bill to rescue Puerto Rico called PROMESA.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/congress-passes-promesa-act-puerto-rico-debt-crisis-n601291

I don’t have any information on Soros’ funds positions on Puerto Rico related securities or derivative contracts, but we suspect that Soros was successful also frim this side.