White House Lists Donors to ’93 Inaugural

They lavished $100,000 gifts and loans on President Clinton to help stage his first inaugural bash. Then many of these wealthy benefactors reaped their rewards, from White House dinners to government appointments.

The first complete accounting of the major donors and lenders to the 1993 inauguration, released by the White House at the request of the Associated Press, shows the names of:

* James Riady and John Huang, executives of Indonesia’s Lippo banking conglomerate who got private Oval Office audiences with the president. Riady and Huang, who have emerged as central figures in the Asian donation controversy, were listed as giving a joint donation of $100,000. Huang later got jobs at the Commerce Department and the Democratic National Committee.

* Several government appointees, including the new White House chief of staff and the chairman of the federal agency that insures securities investors from losses.

* An oil company that recently settled a long-running price-fixing case with the Clinton administration.

* Invitees to White House state dinners, including the wife of agriculture businessman Dwayne Andreas. D. Inez Andreas and her husband, the chairman of Archer-Daniels-Midland, were invited to the state dinner for Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin.

In all, the organizers of Clinton’s last inauguration collected more than $2.5 million in donations and $17 million in interest-free loans as seed money for the January 1993 celebration, the documents show.

The loans were later paid back with proceeds from memorabilia sales and television revenue. Outright donations were tax deductible because they went to a nonprofit foundation set up to pay for free inaugural events for the public.

In all, there were 14 donors who gave $100,000 or more and did not ask to be repaid. Seven of those donations came from companies and four from unions.

Individuals who gave that much were D. Inez Andreas, Riady and Huang jointly, and Richard Park, president of U.S. Woopon Co.

The largest donor was the Wall Street brokerage firm Merrill Lynch, which donated $250,000 and loaned an additional $100,000.

Oil giants accounted for nearly $1 million of the loans, including California-based Occidental Petroleum, which at the time of its $100,000 loan was facing an Energy Department price-fixing case. The company settled that case a year ago for $275 million.