Donations Traced to Questionable Sources

A $10,000 check from a person whose address is an apartment with boarded-up windows in a rundown part of Washington, and a $10,000 gift from a man who associates say has not been in the United States for several years are among the latest group of questionable donations returned by the Democratic National Committee.

The DNC provided few details when it announced the return on Feb. 28 of $1.5 million to 77 donors, many of them businesses or individuals in Southern California. The DNC has said it is returning the contributions after an audit found “insufficient information” about the donors. Federal regulations require individual donors to be U.S. citizens or U.S. residents.

More than half of the donations were raised by John Huang, a former DNC official from Glendale who is at the center of the campaign financing controversy, and $366,000 of the contributions to be refunded were from Johnny Chien Chuen Chung, a Torrance businessman who visited the White House 49 times, often with guests from China.

A review of the donors by The Times, including visits to houses and businesses whose addresses appear on the donation checks, revealed that the contributions included one from a business linked to Arcadia entrepreneur Maria L. Hsia. Hsia was an organizer of both a controversial fund-raiser attended by Vice President Al Gore at a Hacienda Heights Buddhist temple last year and a 1989 visit by Gore to Taiwan.

The $5,000 donation is from T&W; Arts & Crafts Inc., which lists Hsia as its agent in state corporate records and is on the same floor as Hsia’s Arcadia office.

Hsia did not return phone calls seeking comments, and a receptionist at her office said she has no connection to T&W; Arts & Crafts. A sign on the door of the closed T&W; office, however, instructs those making deliveries to “take the articles to Room 277,” which is Hsia’s office.

A $10,000 check from Kun-Cheng Yeh lists an Alhambra address. But at the address, which is the office of an electronics exporting company, surprised employees said Yeh has only a loose connection to the business, and has not been in the United States for several years.

A woman at the firm who declined to identify herself said Yeh is the son of a former partner in the firm but does not work at the firm. “He’s not even in the United States; are you sure you have the right person?” she asked.

When asked how Yeh could be reached, an employee looked through a file and retrieved a phone number for Yeh in Guangdong Province, China. He could not be immediately reached.

The address listed for a $10,000 donation from Washington resident Qing Li is that of a possibly abandoned building. Broken windows on the apartment house are covered by scraps of wood and metal and all of the mailboxes are rusted and hanging open.

No one answered repeated knocks on the door on a recent visit, and property records indicate the house is owned by Quoe Minh Lu, whose telephone is disconnected. The property is valued at $102,000.

Two $5,000 donations came from individuals who listed the Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights as their address. The temple was the site of the Gore fund-raiser last year, which the DNC later said should not have occurred at a house of worship.

Of the $166,750 raised at the temple, the Democrats have now returned $74,050.

One contributor whose donation is being refunded--Henry Chiao, president of United Global Trading Inc., an Alhambra business which contributed $2,500--reacted angrily to a reporter’s inquiry.

“This is ridiculous,” Chiao said of the controversy while telling a reporter to leave his office.

Standing in front of pictures of himself with, among others, President Clinton and former Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, Chiao refused to comment on the matter other than to complain of the intrusion on his privacy.

Times staff writer K. Connie Kang contributed to this story.