Company Fined $8 Million for Illegal Campaign Donations

A Pennsylvania landfill company has pleaded guilty to funneling $129,000 in illegal corporate donations to 10 political candidates--including the campaigns of President Clinton and GOP presidential contender Bob Dole--and agreed to pay an $8-million fine, the largest penalty ever for a campaign finance violation, the U.S. attorney in Harrisburg, Pa., said Wednesday.

While the company pleaded guilty, six individuals--four former officials of the firm, a business associate and a Pennsylvania state legislator--still face trial in a separate 140-count indictment charging they made the illegal contributions and then tried to cover them up when prosecutors began probing the company.

According to the indictment against the company, Empire Sanitary Landfill engaged in an intricate and extensive effort to disguise the illegal corporate contributions as coming from individuals who worked for the company or were associated with it. Empire, which was lobbying on a trash transportation bill pending in Congress, then reimbursed the employees and others for their contributions, the indictment alleged.

The biggest beneficiary of the Empire scheme was the Dole presidential campaign, which allegedly received $80,000 in illegal contributions in April and May 1995. The Clinton-Gore campaign received $10,000 in illegal contributions in September 1995, the indictment said.

According to the indictment, Empire officials would recruit employees, business associates, friends and family to make the contributions, then reimburse them directly from corporate funds or from the officials’ own accounts and repay themselves from corporate funds. They hid the use of the funds on the company books by coding the reimbursements as office entertainment expenses or other legitimate corporate costs, the indictment said.