Indonesians Contradict Democrats on Donations

Breaking their long silence in the scandal over foreign donations to American political campaigns, an Indonesian couple who gave $450,000 to the Democratic Party have told Senate investigators that the funds came from a wealthy relative in Jakarta.

Their detailed account contradicts previous explanations by Democratic officials and raises new questions about the legality of the party’s largest individual contributions during the last election cycle.

Arief Wiriadinata, referred to disparagingly in some news accounts as an “Indonesian gardener,” and his wife, Soraya, explained during a lengthy interview in Jakarta in June how they made a series of five-figure payments to the Democratic National Committee between November 1995 and July 1996.

Their statements, contained in internal Senate documents obtained by The Times, are particularly intriguing because of the couple’s ties to other controversial participants in the fund-raising controversy.

Soraya’s father, Hashim Ning, was a close business partner of Mochtar Riady, the patriarch of the Indonesia-based Lippo Group conglomerate and a longtime supporter of President Clinton. Ning wired $500,000 to the Wiriadinatas for the contributions in November 1995, records show.

The couple then began making sizable donations, their first ever, at the direction of John Huang, a former Lippo executive and then-Commerce Department official, shortly before he moved to a fund-raising job at the DNC.

Huang was aided by James Riady, Mochtar’s son, who two months earlier had arranged an Oval Office meeting with Clinton to help facilitate Huang’s hiring as DNC finance vice chairman.

The Riady connection accounts for one of the most compelling moments captured on the recently released White House videotapes of fund-raising events: Arief Wiriadinata shaking hands with Clinton and confiding, “James Riady sent me.”

DNC and White House officials have said that the Wiriadinatas gave so lavishly to the Democrats because they were grateful that Clinton sent a get-well note to Ning, who suffered a heart attack during a 1995 visit to the United States.

But Arief Wiriadinata provided a different explanation to Senate Governmental Affairs Committee investigators: All the donations were either solicited or recommended by Huang, who in turn promised to arrange business meetings for Wiriadinata with prominent Asian Americans. Wiriadinata owned a U.S. landscape architecture business and a Jakarta-based computer company that he wanted to expand in the United States.

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Furthermore, the couple made the initial donations when Huang was still employed by the Commerce Department and legally prohibited from soliciting campaign contributions. Although internal DNC tracking forms show that his wife, Jane Huang, brought in those funds, the Wiriadinatas told investigators that she never asked or spoke to them about making political donations.

Michael A. Nemeroff, a Washington attorney representing the Wiriadinatas, said: “It is our position that the funds contributed were Mrs. Wiriadinata’s.” He declined further comment.

Ty Cobb, Huang’s attorney, said his client “did nothing illegal in connection with the Wiriadinatas’ voluntary donations.” He said Huang only referred the couple to the DNC while he worked at the Commerce Department, which he was permitted to do, and did not directly solicit funds.

The Wiriadinatas have loomed over the last year as among the leading mystery figures in the continuing Democratic donation controversy. Their largess attracted attention early last fall, long before the broad dimensions of the campaign fund-raising controversy were known.

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The Wiriadinatas, like other foreign-linked donors, retreated overseas, rebuffing questions by investigators and reporters. This silence, also maintained by such Democratic fund-raisers as Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie, Pauline Kanchanalak and the Riadys, has hamstrung congressional and Justice Department inquiries.

That the couple showered the Democrats with more money than any other individual donors in the last election cycle is one of the few things known about them. Among the unknowns: why they gave, where the money came from and what, if anything, they received in return before quietly leaving the country.

And it appeared that questions about the Wiriadinatas and their money would remain unanswered. But the couple finally agreed to speak out, not to satisfy investigators but because they were angered by the depiction of Arief as an “Indonesian gardener” who lacked the resources to be such a generous benefactor.

With their interview with two Senate committee investigators and an FBI agent at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Jakarta on June 24, the Wiriadinatas became the first Riady associates to provide their own version of events that are the focus of ongoing federal and congressional probes.

Arief Wiriadinata said Huang solicited their first donations--a pair of $15,000 checks--when he was a mid-level administrator at the Commerce Department. A Democratic Party staff member familiar with the handling of the Wiriadinatas’ initial contributions said that the party was aware that John Huang had a role in raising the Wiriadinata donations.

The Commerce Department’s inspector general and congressional investigators are reviewing Huang’s government work for possible violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from soliciting campaign contributions.

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The Democrats returned the Wiriadinatas’ donations in November 1996 after learning that the couple had failed to file 1995 U.S. income tax returns and had failed to come back to this country as they had promised.

Their contributions represented more than a quarter of the $1.6 million raised by Huang during the 10 months after he left the Commerce Department and became a party fund-raiser. That money was sent back to contributors because it was deemed illegal, improper or otherwise suspect.

Democratic National Committee spokesman Steve Langdon declined to comment on information provided by the Wiriadinatas to Senate investigators.

Thus far, the Senate committee has elected not to reveal the Wiriadinatas’ interview in its hearings, but The Times obtained a four-page memo that summarizes the couple’s account. The Wiriadinatas were not put under oath and said they deliberately did not tell their U.S. attorney of the session.

Arief Wiriadinata, now a manager of Sea World of Jakarta, a marine park owned by the Lippo Group, told investigators that he was in frequent contact with James Riady. Some administration critics have suggested that the Wiriadinatas may have funneled money on behalf of Riady to support Clinton.

The Riadys, billionaire owners of real estate, banking and insurance interests from Indonesia to China to Los Angeles, were the Wiriadinatas’ link to the heady and high-priced world of campaign finance. Ning, the head of various Indonesian companies himself, was at one time a 50% owner of Lippo Bank in Jakarta. When he became seriously ill in Indonesia in late 1995, the Riadys flew him to Australia for medical care on their private plane.

The Wiriadinatas were residing in a Virginia suburb of Washington in June 1995 when Ning suffered a heart attack while visiting. It was then that they met Huang, who twice visited Ning in the hospital. The Wiriadinatas said Huang told them he did so at the request of the Riadys, who employed him as their top U.S. executive in Los Angeles before he joined the Commerce Department in mid-1994.

On June 19, 1995, at James Riady’s request, the White House sent a get-well note from Clinton to Ning. It was hand-delivered by Mark E. Middleton, a Little Rock, Ark., attorney who had worked in the White House and later became a Riady business associate.

It was this missive that, according to White House and Democratic officials, pried open the Wiriadinatas’ vault.

“It seemed to them a significant courtesy,” Democratic Party Chairman Donald L. Fowler said in a September 1996 interview. “That’s the only linkage we could find.”

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But the Wiriadinatas told the investigators that they were not surprised by the gesture because Ning had met with political leaders around the world.

Rather, Arief Wiriadinata said Huang encouraged him to support the Democratic Party and said Asians needed to be more active in government. Because the Wiriadinatas--unlike Ning and the Riadys--were U.S. residents, they could make political contributions.

Arief, who has a master’s degree from the University of Pennsylvania, said Huang had also promised to introduce him to prominent American business leaders, especially Asian Americans, who would help him build his computer business. He said this was his motivation for donating to the Democrats.

In response to written questions submitted to the DNC last fall, Huang said the Wiriadinatas “expressed an interest in supporting the Democratic Party and the president, and I suggested that they contribute to the DNC. . . . It was my understanding that the couple had substantial resources.”

Around this time, Huang was seeking to move from the Commerce Department to the DNC as a fund-raiser. He proposed the shift to Clinton at a Sept. 13, 1995, Oval Office meeting arranged by James Riady.

During a visit to Jakarta in October 1995, Arief Wiriadinata said Ning agreed to provide his daughter and son-in-law with $500,000 to donate to the Democratic Party. Soraya told investigators that the money was her own and that Ning managed all of the family funds. In Indonesia, it is standard practice for the family patriarch to play this role, she explained.

On Nov. 5, Ning wired $250,000 from a Jakarta account to a First Union Bank account in Soraya’s name, and, two days later, he wired another $250,000 to a separate First Union account under Arief’s name. Arief said the accounts were opened for the sole purpose of contributing to the Democrats. All but $73,000 of the $500,000 in these accounts was used for campaign donations.

The Wiriadinatas made their initial Democratic contributions Nov. 8. Each gave $15,000 to attend an Asian American dinner featuring Vice President Al Gore at a Washington hotel. Arief said the contributions were solicited by Huang, who was still trying to nail down a job at the DNC.

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Huang, who began work there Dec. 4, then arranged for Arief Wiriadinata to be invited to a DNC-sponsored White House coffee with Clinton in the Roosevelt Room on Dec. 15. It was there that Wiriadinata was recorded on videotape invoking James Riady’s name. Three days earlier, election records show, Arief and Soraya Wiriadinata each gave $50,000 to the Democrats.

Later that month, Ning died while the Wiriadinatas were in Jakarta, and the couple remained in Indonesia. But this did not slow their political giving.

In the first seven months of 1996, they made 17 contributions to the Democrats totaling $320,000, records show. Many of the donations arrived in conjunction with Huang’s fund-raisers featuring Clinton--although the Wiriadinatas did not attend them.

The Wiriadinatas said they would have continued to donate, but in October 1996 the Democratic finance controversy erupted.

They told investigators that this sidetracked their plans to return to the United States, and they confirmed that their attorney has advised them to remain overseas.

Arief said he had discussed the uproar over the Indonesians’ role in the U.S. election campaign with James Riady only to the extent that they once asked each other at a social event: Can you believe what’s happening over there?