Panel Wants Answers From Macao Developer

Looming over the fourth week of Senate hearings into campaign-finance abuses, which begins today, will be the shadow of an international multimillionaire who allegedly was behind a series of questionable contributions but whose true role and agenda remain a mystery.

Ng Lap Seng, a real estate developer in Macao, is suspected of supplying some of the cash given to the Democratic Party last year in the names of others.

He is also, at least in part, the money behind Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie, one of the scandal’s central figures. Trie, a onetime Little Rock, Ark., restaurateur and friend of President Clinton, is suspected of funneling illegal cash to the Democratic Party and a legal defense fund set up on behalf of the president. Ng is not permitted to make political contributions because he is not a legal U.S. resident.

But what did Ng want in exchange for his involvement, and what may he have gotten? Witnesses and documents may shed some light on those questions, even though the man himself has refused to cooperate with the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee.

The committee probe is heating up on another front, too, with the panel’s Republican majority poised to issue their first subpoena to the White House for a variety of records.

Senate investigators said Monday that they have been frustrated in their efforts to find out more about Ng, who is known to some of the witnesses as “Mr. Wu.”

“We tried to speak to him,” one investigator said. “We had extensive efforts through foreign governments to reach him. It looked at one point that we would talk to him.”

But Ng backed out at the last minute, leaving investigators with little or no knowledge of his financial means, his business activities or his connections to the Chinese government.

Ng is a Chinese citizen who lives in Macao, a Portuguese enclave off China’s southern coast. He is a member of a Chinese government commission.

“He seems to be a benefactor of sorts to Mr. Trie,” one Senate investigator said.

Ng reportedly fled China as a young man in the late 1970s and settled in Macao. Ng began making his fortune selling cheap cloth to the garment industry. In 1994, he surfaced as one of Trie’s financial angels in a project to take over a downtown Little Rock hotel. In papers filed with the city, Ng was identified as the chairman of the board of the 368-room Hotel Fortuna in Macao. Trie and Ng envisioned the Little Rock hotel as a mecca for Asian travelers and business people. City officials rebuffed their bid.

But the two appear to have remained close.

According to Senate investigators, Ng and his related entities gave Trie more than $750,000 within the last three years. During the same period, Trie gave more than $1.2 million to the Democratic National Committee and the president’s legal defense fund.

The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee today is expected to hear from two Maryland women, who are believed to have funneled $25,000 to the Democratic Party at the behest of Ng and to have been subsequently reimbursed.

Federal election law prohibits reimbursements of campaign contributions and requires disclosure of the actual source of the funds.

Yue F. Chu and Xi Ping Wang, relatives who live across the street from each other in Gaithersburg, Md., will testify about how they were reimbursed by Keshi Zahn, an associate of Trie, after they wrote several checks that were sent to the DNC. Zahn reimbursed the women from a joint Trie/Ng account.

The women, who have received immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony, speak Mandarin and will use translators during their appearance before the committee.

“They are scared,” an investigator said. “They have never been involved in anything like this before.”

Meantime, the committee was preparing to subpoena records from the White House. A committee source said Republican members are frustrated that some documents requested from the White House as long ago as April 9 have not been made available. Among the material being sought is e-mail, lists of phone logs and Secret Service records showing who was allowed into the White House.

Other documents being sought concern whether contributors received any special favors, such as government contracts, in exchange for their campaign donations.

Lanny Breuer, special counsel to the president in charge of investigations, said the anticipated subpoena “appears to have been more driven by the politics of the moment than by the history of our full cooperation.”

Noting that the White House has provided the committee with thousands of documents, Breuer said he would respond to a possible subpoena “in the same good faith and conscientious manner.”

On Monday, the committee also met behind closed doors with FBI Director Louis J. Freeh and CIA Director George J. Tenet regarding how much information can be disclosed about an alleged Chinese government plan to illegally influence the 1996 election.

Times staff writer Alan C. Miller contributed to this story.