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Brown Admits Contacts With Vietnamese

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<i> The Washington Post</i>

Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, through his attorney, acknowledged for the first time Monday that he met three times in the last year with a Vietnamese businessman, whose dealings with Brown are now under scrutiny by a federal grand jury in Florida.

Attorney Reid Weingarten said Brown met with Nguyen Van Hao, a former Vietnamese government official now living in Coral Springs, Fla., but never discussed or received a $700,000 payment for working to lift the trade embargo against Vietnam, as alleged by Ly Thanh Binh, a business associate of Hao’s.

A federal grand jury in Miami is looking into Binh’s allegations that Brown agreed to work toward lifting the trade ban in exchange for business concessions and $700,000 in a Singapore bank account. Brown has not been called before the grand jury, according to Weingarten.

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Brown has denied “any kind of business relationship, any kind of financial relationship, any kind of relationship of any kind” on the Vietnamese trade issue.

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