SAN JUAN – With just hours before the start of the presidential primaries in Puerto Rico, members of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ team accused the leadership of the local Democratic Party of fraud, saying they have hindered the certification process of their voting center officials.

The Hispanic vote director for the campaign of the Vermont senator, Betsy Franceschini, denounced a series of irregularities that her work team faced Friday, while thousands of inmates in the island’s correctional facilities exercised their right to an early ballot.

“Our Bernie Sanders officials were never certified. We had 40 officials we submitted in time for the prisons. Not one of them was certified, while all of theirs [Hillary Clinton’s] went in. Attorney Manny Suárez had to go in order for us to be let in. This is a great fraud,” Franceschini said in a phone interview with Caribbean Business.

In an internal press release CB obtained Friday morning, a group of Sanders officials claimed that the president of the local Democratic Party, Roberto Prats, and its elections commissioner, Ramón López de Azúa, “are holding back the certifications of Bernie Sanders’ voting center officials.”