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NEW YORK (Bloomberg): Elliott Broidy (Photo), a former top political fundraiser for President Donald Trump and the Republican Party, has been indicted as part of a wide-ranging federal investigation into indirect efforts to influence the Trump administration on behalf of foreign interests.
Broidy participated in a scheme to illegally pressure the Trump administration to stop investigating the embezzlement scandal at Malaysia’s state investment fund 1MDB, according to indictment documents released Wednesday.
Jho Low, a Malaysian fugitive accused of being the mastermind behind the 1MDB fraud, initially paid Broidy $ 6 million (ringgit 24.9 million) to pressure the US Department of Justice to halt its investigation and pledged 75 million. an additional $ 311.5 million if the lobbying was successful, the presentation said. Broidy is charged with conspiring to act as an unregistered agent for a foreign principal.
Broidy was charged in a document known as criminal information, which often precedes a guilty plea and the defendant’s cooperation with prosecutors. A spokesperson for Broidy declined to comment.
Prosecutors say several Malaysians, led by Low, diverted money from 1MDB to personal accounts disguised as legitimate businesses and then returned money to officials. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. could end up paying nearly US $ 2 billion (RM8.3 billion) to settle US criminal and regulatory investigations into its role in raising funds for 1MDB, people familiar with the negotiations said.
Two other people involved in the scheme have already pleaded guilty: George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department official, and Nickie Mali Lum Davis, Broidy’s business partner. She admitted in August that she illegally lobbied the US government to end the 1MDB investigation and, separately, to return Guo Wengui, the wealthy Chinese exile who has openly criticized her home country’s government.
Broidy, who made his fortune in venture capital, is the latest Republican-aligned operation to be charged with crimes in recent weeks. Steve Bannon, the former head of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, was on Guo’s yacht off the Connecticut coast when he was arrested in August and charged with conspiring to divert hundreds of thousands of dollars from a campaign to raise funds for a wall on the southern border of the United States.
The 31-page information against Broidy, filed in federal court in Washington, is similar to previous court filings against Lum. Describes a secret campaign to lobby on Low’s behalf from March 2017 to January 2018. Low sought out someone with close ties to the Trump administration to help him torpedo the Justice Department’s effort to pursue a civil forfeiture case against 1MDB, prosecutors said.
Broidy agreed to help, and repeatedly tried to arrange a golf game between Trump and the Malaysian prime minister, which never took place. Broidy met with Trump at the White House in October 2017 and told Davis that he had raised the 1MDB issue even though he had not.
Broidy also lobbied senior US officials to remove Guo after Low established contact with a Chinese government official. In May 2017, Broidy went to China, where he met with Low and the government official in a hotel suite to discuss how Broidy could “use his influence with top US government officials.”
After his initial payment of US $ 6 million, Broidy then received another US $ 3 million (RM12.5 thousand) for his efforts, prosecutors said.
More than a decade ago, Broidy pleaded guilty in New York to making nearly US $ 1,000 (RM4,100) in illegal payments to state officials to funnel US $ 250,000 (RM1,03,000) into state pension funds. to a Broidy background. After agreeing to cooperate with prosecutors, his charges were reduced to a misdemeanor.
Broidy held a prominent role on Trump’s presidential inaugural committee and was vice chair of finance for the Republican National Committee from 2017 to early 2018. He then resigned and said he had agreed to pay US $ 1.6 million (RM6.64 million) to ex Playboy. model who got pregnant during an affair. That deal was brokered by Trump’s longtime attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen, who was also the RNC’s vice president of finance.
He also worked closely with George Nader, a convicted pedophile and adviser to the United Arab Emirates, to promote issues important to that country, documents seen by Bloomberg News show.
In 2017, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and other allied countries cut diplomatic relations with Qatar, claiming that the country supports terrorism, which Qatar denies. Broidy has claimed that he was targeted by Qatar in an email hack. – Bloomberg
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