Finance Hearing to Focus on Contributions From Trie

In a downtown Little Rock, Ark., hotel room, Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie told a business partner from Asia that he was in need of “some spending money.”

The associate, Chinese developer Ng Lap Seng, promptly opened a suitcase filled with cash and handed Trie $20,000, according to an eyewitness account provided to a Senate committee tracking the flow of illegal foreign money into U.S. political campaigns.

Within days of the transfer in May 1994, Trie made two contributions--one for $60,000 and the other for $20,000--to the Democratic Party, records show.

In all, according to Senate investigators, Ng and his related entities gave more than $750,000 during the past three years to Trie, a controversial Democratic fund-raiser and longtime friend of President Clinton. During this same period, Trie channeled more than $1.2 million in donations to the Democratic National Committee and the president’s legal defense fund. All of that money has since been returned amid suspicions that the donations were improper or originated overseas.

Federal and congressional investigators are scrutinizing the flow of funds into and out of Trie’s bank accounts in an effort to determine whether he illegally laundered political contributions on behalf of the Chinese government or other foreign interests.

This week, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee plans to focus on Trie and his fund-raising activities to cap its first round of hearings into campaign finance abuses. In federal and congressional probes of the controversy, Trie and former DNC fund-raiser John Huang have emerged as the primary targets of the most serious allegations.

“We expect that the Republicans will try to prove their so-called theory that the Chinese had a plot to influence U.S. elections,” said DNC Communications Director Amy Weiss Tobe. “They need to end this week with a bang so the American public will tune in to the hearings next fall.”

Investigators are examining how Trie, a onetime Little Rock restaurateur who never gave more than $100 to a political campaign before Clinton’s election in 1992, managed, along with his wife and company, to give $202,000 to the Democratic Party from 1994 to 1996.

Among the witnesses expected to testify are two Maryland women who allegedly gave $25,000 to the DNC last year at the direction of Ng, Trie’s Macao-based partner who has extensive business ties to the Chinese government. The women were subsequently reimbursed by Ng, Senate aides say.

Investigators also are looking into Trie’s connections to Huang, who is suspected of orchestrating illegal donations, and to the Lippo Group, Huang’s former employer. Specifically, Senate aides are reviewing a $100,000 wire transfer sent to Trie through the Lippo Bank of Los Angeles in 1994.

Trie left the country for China shortly after the probes into campaign finance irregularities began late last year and has refused to respond to subpoenas. The State Department, under pressure from House investigators, announced last week that it had asked the Chinese government for help in locating him.

But during talks in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on Saturday, Chinese Foreign Minister Qian Qichen told Secretary of State Madeleine Albright that Beijing had been unable to find Trie, U.S. officials said.

ABC-TV News reported Sunday, however, that Trie has been in Beijing for weeks, living in a hotel where he is registered under his own name.

In an interview, Trie told the network that he may return to the United States as early as this week at the urging of his lawyers, who want him to make a deal with the Justice Department.

“I’m not hiding. I want to stay alive. I want to make my own business. The past is the past,” Trie said.

Trie’s lawyer, Reid Weingarten, could not be reached for comment. Weingarten has said Trie received no funds from the Chinese government for the purpose of influencing U.S. elections.

Trie’s large contributions to Clinton and Democratic causes have aroused suspicion in part because he appeared to lack the financial means to afford them. After working in his family’s Chinese restaurant in Little Rock, Trie opened a small international trading company with offices overseas and began traveling to China to recruit business clients after Clinton’s election in 1992.

Clinton’s victory “opened up a whole world” for Trie, said Jack Kearney, a Little Rock lawyer who represented Trie on a business deal. Trie relished the fact that he knew the president “and he was going to make the best of that kind of relationship” by making money legally, Kearney said.

But a financial disclosure statement filed in March 1996, when Trie was appointed by Clinton to a White House advisory commission on U.S.-Asia trade, indicates that he and his wife earned $101,000 annually.

In April 1994, Trie and Ng formed a partnership to renovate and expand the Camelot Hotel in downtown Little Rock. A financial statement submitted as part of the unsuccessful proposal reports that Ng’s companies generated annual gross sales of $250 million.

A Little Rock developer, who represented Ng and Trie in the Camelot proposal, told Senate investigators that he met with the two in a room at the Excelsior Hotel in May 1994. The developer, Dwight Linkous, said the conversation was mostly in Chinese but that he heard Trie ask Ng for “some spending money” and watched Ng open a suitcase “full of cash” and give Trie $20,000, according to investigators.

Linkous also told investigators about his frustrations in dealing with Trie on a number of business ventures that never blossomed. He added that Trie “never spent a dime he owned.”

Attempts by The Times to reach Linkous were unsuccessful.

Investigators suspect that Trie gave and collected large sums for Democratic causes in order to maintain ready access to the White House and to administration officials, which he used to impress international clients and, some allege, Chinese government officials.

Federal election records show that Trie made two donations to the DNC totaling $80,000 on May 12, 1994. His wife, Wang Mei Trie, donated $20,000 to the DNC on June 3, 1994.

Senate investigators appear unable to document that the $20,000 Ng paid Trie went directly to the Democratic Party. But they point to a trail of large money transfers from Ng’s Bank of China account in Macao and his San Kin Yip Holdings Co. account in Hong Kong to Trie’s account at Riggs National Bank in Washington as evidence suggesting that Trie’s donations came from overseas.

A Senate memo released last month summarizing the bank transactions showed that Ng made a series of wire transfers to Trie last year totaling $470,000. Now investigators say it has been determined that Ng and his companies transferred “in excess of $750,000” to Trie and his entities from 1994 through 1996.

The New York Times reported this month that Trie delivered an envelope stuffed with $100,000 in political donations on the morning of a Radio City Music Hall fund-raiser for Clinton’s 50th birthday party last August. Twelve days before the event, records indicate, Ng wired $200,000 from his Bank of China account to an account he shared with Trie in Washington.

According to the Senate investigation, Ng also persuaded two relatives of an employee at his San Kin Yip trading company to donate $25,000 to the DNC in their names so Ng could attend a Feb. 19, 1996, fund-raiser featuring the president at Washington’s Hay-Adams Hotel.

The two relatives, Yue F. Chu and Xi Ping Wang, “were solicited to front money for Ng Lap Seng,” according to a recent memo written by a Senate committee investigator. The women are expected to testify this week that they made the donations on Ng’s behalf.

Investigators believe that false donors and laundered contributions were used in a scheme to evade the U.S. ban on donations from people without residency status in the U.S.

Investigators also are looking at a $100,000 wire transfer in 1994 to Trie’s account at the First Commercial Bank of Little Rock from the Lippo Bank of Los Angeles account of a firm named Lucky Port.

Two firms called Lucky Port Development Ltd. and Lucky Port Investments Ltd. list offices in Hong Kong. Attempts to reach the businesses at their addresses and telephones turned up people who had not heard of the companies.

Lippo’s former chief U.S. executive was Huang, the Glendale fund-raiser who is also a central figure in the probe. Together, Huang and Trie raised nearly $1.9 million in donations for the DNC last year that were later returned.

Times staff writer Mark Gladstone and researcher Janet Lundblad in Washington, staff writer Robin Wright in Kuala Lumpur and researcher Silvia Cavallini in Hong Kong contributed to this story.