Dymally Aides Accused of Campaign Violations : Election: Included in the 134-count complaint are charges that the two laundered funds in council race.

In his unsuccessful run four years ago for a Los Angeles City Council district that covers part of the Westside, Kenneth Orduna, a top aide to U.S. Rep. Mervyn M. Dymally (D-Compton), listed numerous campaign contributors.

The problem, according to the staff of the state Fair Political Practices Commission, is that dozens of them never sent him a cent. Their names, the FPPC staff alleges, were used illegally to mask donations in excess of the city limit of $500 per person per election.

The laundering of campaign contributions is one among many allegations made in a 134-count complaint that the commission’s executive director, Gregory Baugher, has filed against Orduna and Lonnie Sanders, a Dymally aide who was Orduna’s campaign treasurer. Others include under-reporting of contributions, failure to file timely campaign statements and accepting anonymous contributions in excess of $100.

If the commission agrees with Baugher, the fine could be steep: Each violation is subject to penalties of up to $2,000. The five-member commission is tentatively scheduled to consider the case in October, according to commission spokeswoman Carla Wardlow.

Wardlow declined to say whether the FPPC is seeking a settlement in the case, and neither Orduna nor Sanders could be reached for comment.

But Edward Masry, a Los Angeles attorney for the two Dymally aides, said the FPPC staff had proposed a settlement calling for a fine amounting to “six figures.”

The settlement was rejected, Masry said. “They tried to offer us something, but the figure was so high it was impossible,” he said last week.

The FPPC staff complaint, issued June 5, concerns financing of Orduna’s 1987 campaign for the 10th District City Council seat, which is centered in the Crenshaw area and reaches west into parts of Fairfax, Palms and Beverlywood. The 13-candidate race was eventually won by Nate Holden.

The complaint grew out of an earlier case in which the commission fined a Gardena aircraft parts distributor $20,000 last October for laundering contributions to the Orduna campaign.

The company, F. E. A. Logistics Support Corp., acknowledged giving Orduna $5,000 and identifying 10 employees in whose names the contributions could be reported on public disclosure forms.

The FPPC staff accuses Orduna and Sanders, his campaign manager, of false disclosure in connection with these donations, which are among dozens of contributions cited in the 58-page complaint against the two men.

“In falsely disclosing 10 individuals as contributors when, in fact, FEA was the contributor, Orduna, Sanders and (the Orduna campaign committee) committed 10 violations” of state campaign law, the complaint says.

Another fund-raising operation cited in the complaint deals with the Orduna campaign’s listing of 15 individuals as the source of 15 money orders of $300 each.

Of the seven members of that group who were interviewed by the FPPC staff, all said they had not made the $300 donations. Three of them said Sanders had asked if he could sign their names on the money orders and four said he had not asked them for permission to use their names, according to the complaint.

“In an effort to conceal the use of these sequentially numbered money orders,” the complaint says, “Mr. Sanders varied the reported contribution receipt dates for these 15 individuals.” One of the checks carries the date March 38, according to the complaint.

Other violations cited by the FPPC staff involve nine money orders, also of $300 each. Interviewed by FPPC officials, Sanders acknowledged receiving the anonymous money orders and signing them, but claimed he did not remember who gave them.

State campaign law prohibits candidates from receiving anonymous contributions of $100 or more, requiring that they be turned over to the state instead.

Orduna’s campaign was also cited for under-reporting campaign donations. In one case, the campaign is charged with accepting a $3,000 check from International Waui Co., but reporting it as a $500 contribution.