Lawmaker Details Illegal Funds in ’92 Clinton Race

Former Democratic fund-raiser John Huang has told the FBI that he helped raise $700,000 for President Clinton’s first campaign for the White House through an illegal conduit scheme involving foreign-tainted money, a House committee chairman disclosed Thursday.

Huang told FBI agents that the illegal scheme was approved by Indonesian businessman James T. Riady, a longtime Clinton friend who heads the worldwide Lippo banking group, according to a lengthy statement read by Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.).

Huang, of Glendale, has been cooperating with federal investigators and in August pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiracy in connection with the 1996 Democratic fund-raising scandal.

But the extent of Huang’s fund-raising activities in the first Clinton campaign was previously unknown. And his statements to the FBI suggest that the Democratic Party was receiving large, illegal foreign contributions as early as 1992.

Moments after Burton read from FBI reports of Huang’s disclosures, the House Government Reform Committee, which he heads, voted unanimously to grant Huang immunity from prosecution in return for testifying about the matter before Congress later this year.

Early next week, the committee plans to release the actual FBI summaries of what Huang has told federal agents.

Burton called for the prosecution of Riady, Huang’s former boss at Lippo, based on the FBI documents. Legal analysts, however, pointed out that there is a five-year statute of limitations on 1992 campaign law violations. And Huang, based on his plea agreement, cannot be further prosecuted.

“Obviously there is no suggestion in any way that the [Democratic] campaign had any knowledge of illegalities in 1992,” said White House spokesman Jim Kennedy.

Riady has remained overseas, beyond the reach of U.S. subpoenas, since federal investigators began looking into campaign fund-raising abuses three years ago. Clinton met Riady recently at an event in New Zealand.

Riady’s U.S. attorney could not be reached for comment Thursday. But last year the family-owned Lippo Group said in a statement that, in all its dealings in the United States, “we have attempted to the best of our ability to comply with all applicable laws.”

It was previously known that in August 1992 Riady flew from Jakarta to Los Angeles to attend a Clinton fund-raiser, took a limousine ride with the then-governor of Arkansas and contributed $100,000.

However, Huang told the FBI that Riady also promised during that ride to raise $1 million for Clinton’s first run for the presidency, according to Burton’s statement.

“John Huang goes on to state that he and James Riady then arranged to have hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions funneled through Lippo Group employees and subsidiaries,” Burton said. “Most of the employees didn’t even live in the United States, but they had green cards.”

Burton went on to say that Huang “got the bank account numbers from some of these employees and passed them on to Lippo Group headquarters in Jakarta to make sure that they got reimbursed.”

In the 1996 campaign, as the Democrats’ chief fund-raiser in the Asian American community, Huang collected $3.4 million in contributions, about half of which was later returned by the Democratic National Committee as possibly illegal.

Federal election law prohibits contributions by foreign corporations and noncitizens who live outside the United States. A U.S. subsidiary may contribute to an election campaign if it can show that the revenue was generated through its domestic operations.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman of Los Angeles, the ranking Democrat on Burton’s committee, said that he welcomed Huang’s testimony. But the public should understand that there is no evidence to support earlier Republican charges that Huang was part of “a Chinese plot” to influence U.S. elections, Waxman said.

On a related matter, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno--asked at her weekly news conference about another allegation by Huang that Harold M. Ickes, who was then the deputy White House chief of staff, had asked him in 1995 to raise funds for Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.)--said she learned of that allegation only hours earlier in the media.

But another official said that such a request would not constitute a violation of a federal law that prohibits federal officials from soliciting donations from subordinates. Because Huang at the time was a Commerce Department official, he was not subject to Ickes’ directives.

Robert S. Bennett, Ickes’ attorney, said that his client “has been investigated repeatedly and has testified 30 times on many issues and nothing has been found to be wrong.”

Meanwhile, the Justice Department told a federal court in Arkansas that presidential friend Yah Lin “Charlie” Trie has been providing essential information to its ongoing campaign finance inquiry and should be given a lenient sentence of three years’ probation.

Trie, who will be sentenced Monday, pleaded guilty in May to two counts involving federal campaign violations. In a plea agreement settling a range of charges, Trie acknowledged causing the Democratic National Committee to make a false report to the Federal Election Commission and to making $5,000 in political contributions in the names of others.

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Times staff writer Eric Lichtblau contributed to this story.