Donor With China Ties Reportedly Gave to Right

The Los Angeles businesswoman whose $250,000 in contributions to the Democratic National Committee has helped trigger investigations into possible influence-buying by the Chinese government told Senate investigators that she also donated $50,000 to the National Policy Forum, a conservative think tank under fire for serving as a Republican Party front.

Jessica Elnitiarta’s gift to the GOP-connected group came just days before House Speaker Newt Gingrich met with her father, Indonesian businessman Ted Sioeng, at a select gathering of Asian American business leaders in Beverly Hills. And a Republican consultant confirmed Thursday that he solicited the donation after a Gingrich advisor urged him to raise money for the think tank.

Meanwhile, Haley Barbour, the former head of the Republican National Committee, acknowledged that the forum accepted $25,000 last year from a nonprofit foundation in Taiwan.

“This amounts to less than 1% of NPF’s revenues,” Barbour said in a memo to the now-defunct group’s board of directors.

The disclosures are likely to fuel claims by Democrats that Republican Party leaders actively sought to raise foreign funds to support their national political campaigns. The campaign funding scandal has so far focused principally on allegations that Democrats raised questionable money from Asia during the 1996 campaign.

And if the charges of Chinese meddling in U.S. politics are found to be true, the $50,000 gift could represent significant evidence that Beijing was seeking to influence both major political parties.

Congressional investigators are examining Sioeng, his daughter and their finances, focusing on Sioeng’s “connections overseas and the possibility that he is a conduit for foreign money.”

Gingrich’s spokeswoman, Christina Martin, said: “To be quite blunt, the speaker would not be able to pick out Ted Sioeng in a crowd if he had to. There was no solicitation” by Gingrich.

Sioeng, an elusive figure in recent months, parlayed a close friendship with Chinese officials into a international business empire that ranges from an exclusive franchise to distribute China’s most popular brand of cigarettes to ownership of a pro-Beijing Chinese language newspaper in Monterey Park.

Last year, U.S. intelligence picked up his name while eavesdropping on a conversation between the Chinese government and its embassy in Washington reportedly outlining a covert plan to win influence in U.S. political circles.

FBI and congressional investigators are eager to talk to him, but Sioeng has been out of the country since early this year.

A few weeks ago, however, Elnitiarta, Sioeng’s 30-year-old daughter and business partner, met with investigators from the Governmental Affairs Committee headed by Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn), which is set to begin public hearings Tuesday on the campaign finance controversy.

Elnitiarta, a permanent resident and therefore legally entitled to contribute to political candidates, denied during the interview with investigators that either she or her father were acting as conduits for the Chinese government, according to knowledgeable sources.

Mark J. MacDougall, one of Elnitiarta’s attorneys, said “all of her contributions have been lawful and properly documented. . . . She has made no political contributions on behalf of, or at the direction of, any foreign government.”

Sioeng’s immigration status is unclear, although he is understood to travel on passports from Indonesia and Belize, where he has business interests.

According to election records, Sioeng, Elnitiarta and their U.S. companies contributed more than $355,000 to federal, state and local political candidates since 1993. Most of the money was donated to the Democratic National Committee through John Huang, who was in charge of raising money in the Asian American community.

But the $50,000 contribution to the National Policy Forum adds several new wrinkles to the controversy surrounding the Sioeng family’s largess.

Created by Republican Party Chairman Barbour in 1993. the forum was not required to identify contributors because it was operating as a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization. Unlike political parties, it was not required to disclose its contributors and could accept foreign contributions.

Recently, however, the Internal Revenue Service turned down the organization’s request for tax-exempt privilege, citing its partisan ties to the Republicans. But the RNC maintains that the now-defunct group was independent.

Records and interviews show Elnitiarta’s $50,000 check to the think tank followed an intriguing sequence of events.

On July 12, 1995, California state Treasurer Matt Fong, a Republican, escorted Sioeng to Washington for a photo-op meeting with Gingrich. Fong had received $100,000 in campaign donations from Sioeng and his family, which were returned after Sioeng’s name surfaced in the fund-raising controversy.

On July 17, 1995, $50,000 was transferred by wire from a still-undetermined source and location to the bank account of Panda Industries, a California corporation founded by Sioeng and Elnitiarta to handle his export-import operations in the United States. Investigators are trying to track the source of the money.

On July 18, Elnitiarta wrote a check for $50,000 from Panda Industries to the National Policy Forum. She told investigators, according to sources, that the contribution was solicited by Fong.

Fong confirmed in a telephone interview Thursday that he “encouraged them [Sioeng and Elnitiarta] to support the speaker” but denied that the donation was pegged to any meeting with Gingrich.

He denied specifying how much they should give and suggested that the $50,000 figure might have come from Steve Kinney, a Southern California political operative who has done advance work for Gingrich.

Kinney told The Times that Joe Gaylord, Gingrich’s political advisor, had urged him to raise money for the National Policy Forum. He said he knew Elnitiarta and Sioeng through Fong and decided to approach her for the funds himself.

“I said it was going to the National Policy Forum and it was helpful,” Kinney said. “It’s a think tank that Newt Gingrich had been supportive of and something that we’d like to have them contribute to.”

He said that he went to the Hollywood Metropolitan Hotel, owned by the Sioeng family, on July 18, the day before Gingrich and Gaylord were arriving for a California swing, and picked up the check.

But like Fong, Kinney also denied there was any connection between the donation and Gingrich’s appearance with Sioeng. That event--which Kinney helped to arrange--involved Gingrich, Sioeng and about 20 prominent Chinese American business leaders at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills. At that time, relations between the Democratic administration and China were at a low point. China had recalled its ambassador from Washington after the United States granted a visa to Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui.

A year later, however, Sioeng and his daughter shifted their attention to the Democrats. They attended what was to become a highly controversial fund-raiser for Vice President Al Gore at a Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights in April 1996.

The next month, Sioeng attended a dinner for Clinton at the Sheraton Carlton in Washington. And in July, father and daughter were prominent at a Clinton fund-raiser at the Century Plaza that drew a who’s who of Asian Americans. Occupying a seat of honor next to the President was Ted Sioeng.

The DNC decided to keep its $250,000 in donations from Elnitiarta, saying there was no evidence that the money came from any foreign source.

Rosenzweig reported from Los Angeles and Miller from Washington. Times staff writers Paul Jacobs and Connie Kang contributed to this story.