Ng’s alleged bribery triggers ex-UN General Assembly president’s arrest

A former president of the United Nations General Assembly and Macau billionaire real estate developer Ng Lap Seng were part of a group arrested on bribery charges in what U.S. officials call the early stages of a probe into corruption at the organisation.
Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, issued a warning to officials at the UN Tuesday as he announced the charges against John Ashe, who’s accused of taking US$1.3 million in bribes, and Francis Lorenzo, the ambassador to the UN for the Dominican Republic, who’s accused of helping developer Ng Lap Seng pay bribes to Ashe and others.
According to the complaint, Ng, through intermediaries, paid Ashe more than US$500,000 to submit a document telling the U.N. Secretary General that a yet-to-be built multibillion-dollar U.N.-sponsored conference centre in Macau was necessary.
The intermediaries included Francis Lorenzo, 48, a deputy U.N.
ambassador from the Dominican Republic whom prosecutors say Ng paid US$20,000 to monthly as ‘honorary president’ of one of his organisations, South-South News.
The other was Yin, who authorities said after his arrest had disclosed that Ng viewed the conference centre as his ‘legacy’ and made payments to get action on it.
Ashe, 61, also received more than $800,000 from Chinese businessmen to support their interests within the U.N. and Antigua, and passed some of the money to Antigua’s then-prime minister, who was not named, the complaint said.
Prosecutors said these bribes were arranged through Sheri Yan, chief executive officer of a New York-based organisation, and Heidi Park, its finance director, who were also arrested.
The organisation was unnamed, but the Global Sustainability Foundation website lists Yan and Park as holding those positions.
The foundation did not respond to requests for comment. Baldwin Spencer, who held the prime minister’s post at the time, could not be reached for comment.
“There is a lot more work to do,” Bharara, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, said at a press conference, adding his team had only scratched the surface. “Is bribery business as usual at the UN?” Other connections
The new charges may be connected to other cases, with Ng last year having failed to comply with a request from U.S. prosecutors to answer questions before a Nevada grand jury in an overseas bribery investigation.
Ng, also known as David Ng, heads Macau-based Sun Kian Ip Group, whose foundation arm lists several ambassadors to the U.N., including Ashe and Lorenzo, as holding leadership positions.
In China, Ng sits on several government committees and belongs to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the government.
Ng’s name previously surfaced in U.S. investigations into how foreign money might have been funnelled into the Democratic National Committee before the 1996 elections, when it was working to re-elect President Bill Clinton.
Ng, who was never charged, ceased travelling to the United States from 1996 to 2000 during the probe, prosecutors have said.
More recently, in 2014, Ng was subpoenaed in a U.S. foreign bribery investigation, a source has said, after his name surfaced in litigation involving billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. Adelson said he didn’t know Ng in testimony at a May hearing in Las Vegas.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have also brought sealed charges against another individual linked to Ng, Yin’s lawyer Sabrina Shroff said at a September 29 hearing. The status of any Brooklyn-based investigation was unclear on Tuesday.
Ng, 68, who has a personal net worth of some US$1.8 billion, has been held in a federal jail in Manhattan since being arrested on September 19 in a separate case, in which he was accused of bringing US$4.5 million into the country and lying about its purpose to U.S. authorities.
Bharara said prosecutors were investigating what Ng did with the cash.
“We’re looking at all the money,” Bharara said. “We follow the money.”
Ashe, the former ambassador to the UN for Antigua and Barbuda, was also accused of sharing some of the bribe money with the Caribbean nation’s prime minister as he lobbied for Chinese interests, the U.S. said.
“Going to Antigua on Thursday to vote and would need to take something for the PM,” Ashe wrote to Lorenzo in a June 8, 2014 e-mail, according to the U.S. “Hope I can have the US$26 K in cash before then.”
According to the complaint, Ashe sent US$100,000 to the prime minister in a series of US$20,000 cheques and sent about US$13,000 to the prime minister’s political party. That was part of the US$170,000 in total the prime minister received from one of Ashe’s bank accounts, the U.S.
said.
The Antigua mission to the UN didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.
Five of the six defendants named in the criminal complaint unsealed in Manhattan federal court were arrested and held without bail after appearing in court, said Kelly Langmesser, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s New York office.
Ambassador ‘trusted’
Lorenzo was arrested outside the midtown Manhattan offices of the South-South News. He’s the president of the news organisation, which covers global development issues as well as the United Nations.
“Ambassador Lorenzo acted in good faith at all times,” said his lawyer, Brian Bieber. “He trusted the people he associated with and relied upon their integrity in all business dealings. He had no knowledge of any of their criminal actions.”
U.S. Magistrate Judge James Francis agreed to release Ashe on US$1 million bond secured by his property and directed that he remain under house arrest with electronic monitoring.
Robert Van Lierop, Ashe’s lawyer, said his client had a “sterling reputation” and wouldn’t leave the U.S. because his family lives here.
“We will fight the charges and he will be acquitted,” Van Lierop said after court.
Shiwei Yan and Heidi Hong Piao, whom the U.S. accused of arranging bribes for Ashe, were both arrested at a Manhattan residence near the UN’s Manhattan headquarters, Langmesser said.
Lawyers for the other four defendants declined to comment on the charges.
One of Ng’s lawyers is Guy David Singer, a partner at Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe who specialises in foreign bribery cases. Singer was also the lead prosecutor of the government’s case against lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who went to prison after bilking Indian tribes.
The UN wasn’t told about the U.S. investigation and Secretary-General Ban
ki-Moon learned of the allegations Tuesday morning, Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for Ban, told reporters at a daily briefing.
Ban “was shocked and deeply troubled to learn of the allegations, which go to the heart of the integrity of the UN,” Dujarric said. “Corruption is not business as usual at the UN.”
The organisation will co-operate with U.S. authorities, he said.
In February 2012, Ashe submitted a document to the UN supporting Ng’s Macau Conference Centre, the U.S. said. Lorenzo used the document in promotional materials with other officials and an investment bank to imply the centre was likely to be supported by the UN, the U.S. said.
Ban’s staff “have no recollection of any discussion between John Ashe and the Secretary-General relating to a centre in Macau,” Dujarric said.
Diplomatic immunity
Ashe was also charged with failing to report US$1.2 million in income, including the bribes, to the Internal Revenue Service. It’s the only charge which wouldn’t be covered by diplomatic immunity, although he waived that privilege when he applied to be a permanent resident in the U.S. in 2000, according to the complaint.
After his arrest, Ashe told investigators he had accepted bribes, prosecutor Daniel Richenthal said in court. “Over the course of years he accepted millions of dollars in bribes in various forms, some of which he admitted after he was arrested today,” Richenthal said.
He may have residual immunity for acts that were done within the scope of his official positions, the U.S. said.
Ashe received money for a family vacation and the construction of a basketball court at his house in Dobbs Ferry, New York, prosecutors said. Some of the bribes went to bank accounts Ashe set up to fund his presidency, according to the complaint. Money from those accounts also went to pay his mortgage and other items such as a US$40,000 lease on a new BMW, US$54,000 for a pair of Rolex watches and US$59,000 for a single order of custom-tailored suits, Bharara said.
“For Rolexes, bespoke suits and a private basketball court, John Ashe, the 68th President of the UN General Assembly, sold himself and the global institution he led,” said Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney in Manhattan.
Ashe steered a Chinese technology executive to a Kenyan UN official in order to facilitate meetings between the Chinese and government officials in Nairobi, according to the complaint. The meetings took place and the U.S. suggests, but doesn’t state explicitly, that similar bribes were paid.
Bharara’s corruption allegations at the UN follow his pursuit of similar crimes in New York’s state capital of Albany and come several months after Loretta Lynch, the U.S. Attorney General, announced charges against officials from the international soccer federation.
“If proven, today’s charges will confirm that the cancer of corruption that plagues so many state and local governments infects the United Nations as well,” Bharara said.
The case is U.S. v. Ashe, 15-mag-3562, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).
with Reuters & Bloomberg