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.