Reprinted from The Washington Times, March 6, 1998
Chung charged, expected to
plead to illegal Clinton funding
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
California businessman Johnny Chung, a focus of campaign-finance-abuse investigations by the Justice Department and Congress, was charged Thursday with illegally funneling money to the Clinton-Gore re-election committee by reimbursing donors he had asked to contribute.
Mr. Chung, a frequent White House visitor who gave a $50,000 campaign check to first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's chief of staff at the White House in 1995, was accused of income-tax evasion, bank fraud and conspiracy to violate federal election-campaign laws.
Court documents said Mr. Chung also sought to launder donations to Sen. John Kerry's 1996 re-election campaign in Massachusetts.
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Mr. Chung is expected to enter a guilty plea in the case on Monday, according to lawyers close to the case. The charges were listed in a criminal information filed in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.
The guilty plea, the sources said, appears to be part of an agreement with prosecutors for Mr. Chung's cooperation in the investigation of campaign-finance abuses during the 1996 elections. He is accused of violating the Federal Election Campaign Act by exceeding the statutory limit on contributions and conspiring to cause donations in the names of others.
The charges focus on two fund-raisers: for President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore in Century City, Calif., on Sept. 21, 1995; and a Sept. 9, 1996, fund-raiser for Mr. Kerry in Beverly Hills, Calif.
The longtime Democratic supporter and friend of President Clinton's once was described by a White House national security aide as a "hustler" seeking to turn high-level government contacts into business opportunities. But Mr. Chung still managed to visit the White House 51 times and give $366,000 to Democrats between 1994 and 1996. Twenty of those visits occurred after he had been described as a hustler.
Mr. Chung gave Margaret A. Williams, the first lady's chief of staff, the $50,000 check on March 9, 1995, raising questions of whether she violated federal law forbidding White House staffers to solicit or accept donations on government property. She denied in testimony before a Senate committee that she had violated the law, saying she took the check and immediately forwarded it to the Democratic National Committee.
Mrs. Williams also said she did not recall telling an assistant, Evan Ryan, that the donation would help get Mr. Chung in to see the president. Miss Ryan told House investigators during an Aug. 20, 1997, deposition that she told Mrs. Williams that Mr. Chung wanted to meet with the president along with six executives from Chinese government-controlled companies and was hoping to see Mr. Clinton give his weekly radio address.
On the same day Mr. Chung handed over the check, he and the businessmen showed up at Democratic Party headquarters to meet DNC Chairman Don Fowler. Two days later, he and the businessmen attended the president's weekly radio address in the Oval Office and posed with the first lady for a picture.
Mr. Chung, a Taiwan-born businessman who owns a fax company in California, has said he was told by Miss Ryan that Mrs. Clinton was looking for help paying off $80,000 in Christmas party bills. Congressional investigators have sought to ask Mr. Chung how he knew about the White House bills and to question him on other contacts he had with administration or DNC officials.
Congressional investigators believe Mr. Chung may have funneled campaign cash from China to the Democratic Party. Senate investigators said he had only $10,000 in his account when he gave the $50,000 check to Mrs. Williams, but received a wire transfer a few days later for $150,000 from the Bank of China.
Meanwhile, Yogesh Gandhi, suspected of being an illegal conduit for $325,000 in foreign contributions to the Democratic Party, was arrested Wednesday by the FBI in California on unrelated charges as he prepared to fly home to India.
The Justice Department said Mr. Gandhi was taken into custody at his home in Walnut Creek, Calif. He appeared before a U.S. magistrate in San Francisco on a mail-fraud charge accusing him of obtaining corporate American Express cards for himself and his wife, Kristi Marshall, in 1995 by forging a co-worker's name on the application.
An affidavit by FBI agent Ramyar Tabatabaian, a member of the Justice Department's campaign-finance task force, said police in Hayward, Calif., learned that Mr. Gandhi had a United Airlines ticket to leave at noon Thursday from San Francisco to New Delhi, by way of New York and London.Copyright 1998 News World Communications, Inc.
Reprinted with permission of
The Washington Times.
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