Brown Linked to $700,000 Illegal Payoff

The FBI is investigating allegations that Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown agreed to accept a $700,000 payment from the Vietnamese government to help smooth the way for lifting the U.S. trade embargo against the Southeast Asian nation.

Brown, traveling with President Clinton on Friday, vehemently denied the allegations, which are being reported for the first time in the latest editions of U.S. News & World Report.

“It’s totally without foundation,” Brown said of the report, adding that he has “never” spoken to anyone in the FBI about the matter.

While an FBI spokesman declined to “confirm or deny the existence of an investigation,” another government source acknowledged that an inquiry is under way, saying that such allegations must be checked out when they involve a high-ranking government official.

The news magazine said that the FBI office in Miami opened the investigation in late February in response to allegations by Vietnamese business consultant Ly Thanh Binh, who lives in Tamarac, Fla.

According to the magazine, Binh told FBI agents that one of his former partners approached Brown in November, 1992, to enlist Brown’s help in lifting the trade embargo against Vietnam.

According to the magazine, Binh told investigators that the former partner, Nguyen Van Hao, also of Florida, had agreed to pay Brown $700,000 for help in getting the embargo removed. He said Hao told him the money was being transferred to an account at Banque Indosuez in Singapore, the magazine said.

Brown called the U.S. News report “absolutely ridiculous.”

“I have never been involved in any such thing,” he said. “I have never had any kind of business relationship, any kind of financial relationship, any kind of relationship of any kind on this matter. Someone who has never claimed to have met me, never claimed to have seen me, never claimed to have known me, has been pumping this story up for the last five or six months. It’s absolutely and totally absurd.”

The trade embargo was imposed on the Vietnamese after the Vietnam War. Only recently has there been serious talk of lifting it, now that the Vietnamese have begun to cooperate in resolving the cases of American servicemen still officially listed as missing in action in Southeast Asia.

Brown’s appointment as commerce secretary was controversial because of his activities as a lobbyist and legal representative for foreign firms, particularly Japanese electronics companies.

The legal and lobbying firm of which he was a partner, Patton, Boggs & Blow, has represented numerous foreign clients, including the former government of Haiti and the scandal-plagued Bank of Credit & Commerce International.

Shortly after being nominated by Clinton as commerce secretary, Brown agreed to sever his ties with the firm.