By Nick Brown
NEW YORK, May 2 (Reuters) - Holders of Puerto Rican sales tax-backed debt sued the U.S. territory in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, alleging its debt-cutting plans violate the U.S. Constitution and kicking off a likely deluge of lawsuits against the ailing island.
The complaint, filed in federal court in San Juan, accuses Puerto Rico's leadership of impairing contractual rights of so-called COFINA bondholders, whose debt is backed by sales tax revenue, and trying to take their property in what they say are violations of the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution.
With $70 billion in debt, a 45 percent poverty rate and near-insolvent public health and pension systems, a torrent of litigation could force Puerto Rico into a so-called Title III proceeding - an in-court debt-cutting process similar to U.S. bankruptcy.
Midnight Tuesday morning marked the end of a freeze on creditor litigation under last year's federal rescue law known as PROMESA, designed to encourage Puerto Rico and its federal financial oversight board to negotiate debt-cutting agreements with creditors.
With no deals reached, the expiration of the freeze opened the floodgates for stakeholders to take Puerto Rico to court, in hopes of blocking Governor Ricardo Rossello's plan to impose drastic repayment cuts.
The COFINA plaintiffs - which include local COFINA holder Jose Rodriguez Perello, as well as hedge funds like Cyrus Capital Partners LP and Tilden Park Capital Management - accuse Puerto Rico, Rossello and other officials of angling to repurpose the tax revenue earmarked to pay COFINA debt.
The plaintiffs accuse Puerto Rico of taking their property "without just compensation or due process in violation of rights protected under the United States and Puerto Rico Constitutions."
They cite as evidence a law signed by Rossello on Saturday that would give the government authority to redirect sales tax revenue into Puerto Rico's general fund as part of a debt restructuring.
Puerto Rico "must not be allowed to continue to breach its constitutional and contractual obligations at will," the lawsuit said.
The complaint asks the court to block Rossello from implementing a fiscal turnaround blueprint, approved by the oversight board in March, which has been the bane of island creditors.
The blueprint forecasts that Puerto Rico will have only $800 million a year to pay its debt, less than a quarter of what it owes, auguring big haircuts for all bondholders.
Litigation could spur the oversight board to push Puerto Rico into Title III, created as part of PROMESA. That would protect the island from lawsuits and give it more legal sway to impose the kinds of contractual alterations the COFINA group is accusing it of undertaking illegally out of court.