In an effort to circumvent contribution limits, the governor and his associates disguised the source of the contributions by listing them under other people’s names, the indictment alleges.

Image Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila in 2006 during the 54th anniversary celebration of the establishment of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. Credit... Andres Leighton/Associated Press

In return for the Pennsylvania contributions, the indictment says, Mr. Acevedo helped the business executives obtain contracts from Puerto Rican government agencies for themselves and their clients.

During the governor’s successful 2004 gubernatorial bid, the indictment says, Puerto Rican business executives made large and unreported donations to the campaign  as much as $50,000 apiece  by disguising them as payments to the campaign’s public relations and media company. The campaign would paper over the contributions by drawing up fake invoices to make them appear to be payments for legitimate business expenses.

The indictment also accuses Mr. Acevedo of spending campaign funds on personal expenses and illegally failing to report it on his income tax returns. Federal officials say that Mr. Acevedo used this money to pay for family vacations in Miami, Orlando and China; to pay for $57,000 worth of “high-end” clothing; and to pay personal credit card bills.

The investigation had been a lively topic of conversation and speculation in Puerto Rico’s political circles since it began; in the absence of many hard facts about what invesitgators were finding, rumor became the operative currency. In recent months, the consensus among political analysts and politicians had been that Mr. Acevedo would probably escape charges but could be named by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator.

So news that the governor himself had been indicted seemed to take even the most seasoned and jaded members of the island’s political class by surprise. But it also produced something of a collective exhalation, and allowed the island to pass from the wilderness of gossip to the stark realities of a federal criminal case.

Not surprisingly, the indictment dominated the island’s news media on Thursday, as well as conversations in the workplace and around the kitchen table.