Riady to pay $8.6m fine

Riady to pay $8.6m fine

WASHINGTON (AP): Indonesian billionaire James Riady has agreed
to pay a record US$8.6 million criminal fine and plead guilty to
using corporate funds from his foreign Lippo Group to reimburse
contributors to Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign for the presidency,
the Justice Department announced Thursday night.

Riady, a key figure in the campaign finance scandal, pledged
$1 million in 1992 to support the then-Arkansas governor's
campaign, the government said.

Foreign campaign contributions are illegal under U.S. law.
Under terms of a plea bargain filed in U.S. District Court in Los
Angeles, Riady agreed to surrender and come to this country at an
unspecified future date even though there is no extradition
treaty between Indonesia and the United States.

An FBI summary released last year said Democratic fund-raiser
John Huang, a Riady employee, alleged that Riady had told
Clinton, while he was Arkansas governor, during a limousine ride
that he wanted to raise $1 million for his campaign. Huang
himself pleaded guilty to a campaign financing felony and has
been cooperating with the government since August 1999.

Last April, Clinton told federal investigators that he did not
have "a specific recollection of what the conversation was, or
this fact of the car ride." He said he only remembered seeing
Riady "sometime in '92 after I became the nominee," and that
Riady pledged to help his campaign.

Riady agreed to plead guilty to a felony charge of conspiring
to defraud the United States.

In addition, LippoBank California, a California state-
chartered bank affiliated with Lippo Group, agreed to plead
guilty to 86 misdemeanor accounts charging that its agents, Riady
and Huang, made illegal foreign campaign contributions from 1988
through 1994.

Riady is one of 26 people and two corporations so far charged
by Justice's campaign finance task force since it was established
four years ago.

Riady also agreed to cooperate with the government's
continuing investigation.

The total of $8,610,000 in fines is the largest ever imposed
in a campaign finance case in U.S. history, the department said.
A Justice Department official, requesting anonymity, said federal
sentencing guidelines would not call for a prison term for a
first time offender like Riady for this type of felony
conviction.