Temple’s Political Giving Hidden in ‘93, Records Say

The aggressive Democratic fund-raiser behind last year’s Buddhist temple benefit featuring Vice President Al Gore acted to conceal temple political donations as early as 1993, according to records and testimony that reveal a more extensive history of temple money-laundering than was previously known.

A federal grand jury is investigating fund-raiser Maria Hsia and the temple’s potentially illegal contributions, including a $5,000 donation last October to Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.), The Times has learned.

And Hsia has been singled out as one of the initial targets of the recently reorganized Justice Department task force investigating alleged campaign-finance abuses, sources confirm.

Hsia not only helped arrange for the Hsi Lai Temple to provide the $5,000 Kennedy contribution, according to records turned over to congressional investigators, but she also was one of five straw donors who served as conduits for the temple’s hidden donation. Among the donors was Donald E. Burns, a Los Angeles attorney and former California secretary of transportation who, like the others, was reimbursed with a $1,000 check from the temple.

The disclosures demonstrate that questionable political fund-raising by the Hacienda Heights temple extended well beyond its controversial role in the 1996 Gore campaign luncheon that brought in about $140,000 for the Democratic National Committee. The temple, as a tax-exempt religious institution, is prohibited from making campaign contributions.

In addition to the Patrick Kennedy donation, records show, the temple used straw donors to disguise $106,500 in contributions to the DNC, $10,000 to state Assembly candidate Julia Wu, $8,000 to Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, $5,500 to Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe and $900 to Los Angeles County Assessor Kenneth P. Hahn. Sen. Kennedy and Hahn are Democrats, Wu and Knabe are Republicans.

Hsia, a 46-year-old Arcadia immigration consultant, personally served as a straw donor for the temple’s $500 contribution to California’s then-Secretary of State March Fong Eu in 1993 and for $1,500 of the temple’s donations to Knabe in 1996, according to bank and federal election records.

Recent grand jury testimony, sources say, has focused on Hsia and her long relationship with the temple, her campaign fund-raising in the Asian American community dating to the mid-1980s and her knowledge of campaign finance regulations.

Her Washington attorney, Nancy Luque, decried Hsia’s emerging image as “a sort of Mata Hari of the temple” and said she is being unfairly treated.

“When all the facts are known, it will be clear that Maria Hsia did not create or knowingly participate in any ‘reimbursement’ scenario,” Luque said in an interview.

Although Hsia’s legal problems appear to be mounting, sources familiar with the federal inquiry expressed doubts that the religious center in Hacienda Heights will become a target for criminal sanction. Nonetheless, Hsia’s travails are politically troubling for Gore, whose fund-raising ties to the party activist go back nearly a decade.

Pattern Same Since 1993, Nuns Say

Temple nuns, given immunity by the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee probing 1996 campaign fund-raising, have said in sworn statements that the pattern of laundered temple donations has been the same since at least 1993, with Hsia generally directing the giving.

“Hsia’s modus operandi seemed to be to select a politician, approach the temple for money and the temple would funnel that money through straw donors to that politician’s campaign,” said a senior Senate investigator who did not want to be identified. Hsia “typically stopped by the temple to pick up the donation checks in person from the temple treasurer.”

A temple spokesman acknowledged the reimbursements but insisted they resulted from mistakes, not subterfuge. Attorney Brian Sun of Santa Monica said temple officials were unfamiliar with “ambiguous and arcane” campaign finance laws.

“The temple never intended to skirt the law or violate any rules,” Sun said. “There was no evil venality here. Had they been made aware of the rules, they never would have engaged in this kind of conduct.”

The DNC, which previously returned more than half the contributions from temple donors, disclosed that it also turned over $50,700 last week to the federal Treasury, including donations dating to 1993.

The party acted after the Senate panel developed evidence “that the temple had committed a violation of the federal elections campaign act,” said DNC General Counsel Joseph Sandler. He said the money from 16 straw donors was sent to the government rather than back to the temple because “we didn’t feel it was appropriate to return it to the entity that had committed the offense.”

Aides for Patrick Kennedy and his father, Edward, said they returned the donations after questions were raised publicly. “We were absolutely, positively, not aware” of the reimbursements, said Tony Marcella, Patrick Kennedy’s chief of staff.

Spokesmen for Knabe and Hahn said the officials did not know the donations allegedly involved temple reimbursements and would amend their campaign reports if that proved to be the case.

Burns did not return calls seeking comment and Wu could not be reached.

Found Herself on Political Sidelines

Hsia’s prominence in the political finance controversy hardly could have been predicted. After years of successful fund-raising in the 1980s, she had been forced to the political sidelines by personal and financial setbacks.

Then, in 1996, the temple asked Hsia to deliver a prestigious visitor--either President Clinton or Gore.

The Hsi Lai Temple, a $25-million red-tiled compound, is the largest Buddhist temple in the Western Hemisphere. It was founded in 1987 by Venerable Master Shing Yun, a politically sophisticated and ambitious monk who built one of the most prominent Buddhist groups in Taiwan.

One of the master’s goals is promotion of Buddhism around the world, a strategy being pursued early last year when he reportedly urged Hsia to organize a ceremonial temple reception for a high-ranking American leader.

“She came back to politics to help the temple,” said an associate of Hsia. “It wasn’t to help Gore or the Democrats. It was for the master.”

When Hsia set out to bring Clinton or Gore to the temple in 1996, she first contacted DNC finance vice chairman John Huang, whom she had introduced to fund-raising nearly a decade earlier. Both had been leaders of an Asian American group that raised money for Democratic Senate candidates.

Among the major beneficiaries of Hsia’s early fund-raising were then-Sens. Al Gore of Tennessee and Paul Simon (D-Ill.). She boasted to friends during the late 1980s that she personally raised about $1.5 million for Democrats.

She also raised money for some Republicans, including Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and then-Rep. Vin Weber of Minnesota.

With the goodwill she engendered among politicians who were grateful for financial support, Hsia successfully lobbied for immigration law changes and solicited favors for her clients from senators and their aides.

Meanwhile, her relationship with the temple grew. She counseled nuns and monks on their personal immigration problems, arranged temple financial backing for a Gore trip to Taiwan, handled community relations and worked to gain state accreditation for a temple university.

“The rush to judge Ms. Hsia, a woman who has spent many years of her life fighting for the civil rights of others, is more than a cruel irony,” said her attorney, Luque. “It’s shameful.”

But the seeds of political controversy also were sown in those early years. It was at Hsia’s urging that the temple conducted what appears to be its first political fund-raising event.

In 1990, Rep. Bruce Morrison (D-Conn.), then a gubernatorial candidate, was feted at a $300-per-plate luncheon at the Hsi Lai Temple organized by Hsia. The event brought in more than $20,000.

Morrison was then chairman of the House immigration subcommittee and author of immigration legislation that Hsia and the temple sought to influence. Two temple nuns helped Hsia lobby that summer in Washington. When Morrison’s bill passed, it included liberalized visa rules for Buddhist workers. Hsia was invited to the White House signing ceremony in November 1990 and received one of the presidential pens.

After Morrison lost his gubernatorial bid and left Congress in 1991, Hsia promptly hired him as a $10,000-per-month consultant to help her exploit another aspect of Morrison’s newly enacted immigration bill: a provision allowing wealthy foreigners to get visas if they invested $1 million in job-producing businesses in the United States.

Their partnership was not successful, but court records show that Hsia paid Morrison more than $50,000 over six months.

Morrison said he did not recall his appearance at the Hsi Lai Temple in 1990 as a fund-raiser, but he acknowledged that “Maria Hsia helped raise money for me, and, whenever she set up groups of people for me to talk to, I talked to them.”

Hsia Is Dealt Financial Blow

Regarding his business arrangement with Hsia after leaving Congress, Morrison said: “I consulted with Maria after I was in Congress. I made presentations out there. It was unlikely to be a huge business.”

Around the same time, Hsia suffered a financial blow when a longtime personal and business partnership ended in hard feelings and litigation. “She was broke,” her lawyer said.

Those money problems forced her out of fund-raising and off the circuit of costly campaign luncheons, dinners and receptions. Her lobbying efforts also were greatly reduced.

But in 1996, Hsia’s return to political action was financed by Hsi Lai Temple. In February 1996, she advised the temple to donate $25,000 for a Democratic fund-raiser featuring Clinton at Washington’s Hay-Adams Hotel.

That was Huang’s first big event at the DNC--and the party’s most profitable Asian American fund-raiser. It generated $1.1 million.

According to statements to investigators by temple nuns, Hsia’s request was approved by the temple abbess, who signed a check request form that was taken to temple treasurer Yi Chu.

Yi Chu, in turn, set about rounding up straw donors by trading checks with “anybody that I bumped into,” she told investigators. In the end, nine different nuns, monks and devotees had donations to the DNC recorded in their names, although the money was reimbursed by the temple.

A month later, Hsia and Huang arranged for the master to meet Gore at the White House and invite the vice president to visit the temple.

Visit Not Meant as Fund-Raiser

By numerous accounts, Gore’s temple visit was not intended to be a fund-raiser. Scheduling conflicts are blamed for forcing campaign planners to consolidate a restaurant fund-raiser orchestrated by Huang with the temple luncheon.

Hsia reportedly expressed concern that temple monastics take care not to engage in conduct that might jeopardize the temple’s tax-exempt status.

In statements to Senate investigators, Matthew Gorman, Hsia’s assistant who helped organize logistics for the Gore luncheon, said he relayed a warning from Hsia to the temple not to use Hsi Lai telephones for “political purposes.” He said Hsia and Huang later used cellular phones while at the temple to make calls soliciting donations.

But there was no apparent hesitation to collect substantial cash donations from the temple.

According to Gorman, Hsia confided after Gore’s visit that not enough money was raised but that she had talked to the master and he said “he would take care of it.”

A day after the Gore luncheon, Hsia and Huang returned to the temple, where $55,000 more in temple-reimbursed donations had been collected by Yi Chu from 11 nuns and devotees, according to records and Senate testimony.

Luque said that “Maria never regarded this event as a fund-raiser. . . . I can’t imagine that she told Matthew Gorman that this was going to be a fund-raiser.”

The attorney also said any suggestion that Hsia warned the temple not to use the phones for political purposes was “absolutely false.”

In July, three months after Gore’s visit, Yi Chu responded to another Hsia request for $10,000 to buy two tickets to another Huang-organized DNC fund-raiser featuring Clinton in Century City. Hsia and the temple abbess attended, and the temple provided the money. But the contributions were recorded in the names of two straw donors arranged by the treasurer.

Temple Contacted Again for Request

By last fall, the temple’s reimbursed contributions exceeded $100,000 for 1996 alone, records show.

But Hsia was not done. She called the temple with one more request. It would turn out to be Hsi Lai Temple’s last laundered contribution--and one of the most troublesome.

The date was Oct. 5, 1996. Man Ho, assistant abbess, took Hsia’s call. Hsia was asking the temple to contribute $5,000 to the reelection campaign of first-term Rhode Island congressman Patrick Kennedy.

Man Ho told Senate investigators that she handled the request in routine fashion. She filled out the proper check-request form and took it immediately to treasurer Yi Chu.

But this time Yi Chu balked. As the treasurer would later tell Senate investigators, she was simply too busy to be bothered rounding up the usual straw donors.

“She was very angry,” Man Ho told investigators.

But the temple treasurer made no objection to the expenditure of another $5,000. In fact, she signed five separate $1,000 checks on the temple’s general account, leaving blank the payee line. She told Man Ho to find her own donors to reimburse.

Instead, according to statements to investigators, Man Ho gave the blank checks to Hsia. That same day, records show, Hsia and four of her associates--including former state official Burns--made $1,000 donations to the younger Kennedy and deposited the temple checks into their personal accounts.

Later that month, the campaign-finance controversy erupted in newspaper headlines from Los Angeles to Washington.

Master Yun is especially unhappy with references to temple “money laundering.”

Last month, in a statement sent to the Senate committee, Yun said such a term should be reserved for the “dirty money” of smugglers and drug traffickers.

“Our money comes from devotees’ contributions, (book sales) and funds raised by our nuns and monks,” Yun said.

He compared the political gifts to the financial assistance the temple provides to disaster victims. “Monks and nuns are fond of giving,” he said. “Through giving, they establish goodwill.”

Times staff writer Henry Weinstein and researcher Janet Lundblad in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

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Reimbursement From the Temple

Political fund-raiser and consultant Maria Hsia, a central figure in the controversial fund-raiser at a Hacienda Heights Buddhist temple last year, was reimbursed by the temple for contributions dating back to 1993, records show. Tax-exempt religious organizations are prohibited from making political donations.

* Hsia wrote this check for $1,500 to the campaign of Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe in 1996.

* One day later, a temple official wrote this check to Hsia for the same amount, noting in the memo field that is was a contribution to Knabe. The money then as deposited in her bank account.