Hubbell Questioned On Riady Connections -- Nov. 22, 1996

Did Lindsey Try To Mislead On Riady Contacts? -- Nov. 19, 1996

Huang Ouster 'Typical Layoff,' Says DNC -- Nov. 18, 1996

Clinton Admits Discussing Policy Issues With Riady -- Nov. 16, 1996

DNC Returns $450,000 Donated By Asian Couple

Democratic Campaign Refunds Top $1.5 Million

WASHINGTON (ALLPolitics, Nov. 23) -- The Democratic Party said late Friday it would return $450,000 in campaign contributions made by an Indonesian landscape architect and his wife, boosting the amount of questionable party donations refunded to more than $1.5 million.

Arief and Soraya Wiriadinata, former permanent U.S. residents who had lived in a Virginia suburb, donated the money in 1995 and 1996. The couple failed to file a federal tax return last year.

The Democratic National Committee said Friday that it found the donations to be legal, because donations from permanent U.S. residents are allowed, even when they are citizens of another country.

However, DNC spokeswoman Amy Weiss Tobe said no evidence existed to indicate the Wiriadinatas had filed a late return for 1995 and paid interest and penalties, as they had told the DNC they would. The DNC assumed they had not.

"This failure, in our view, is fundamentally inconsistent with the obligations of permanent residency as it is with U.S. citizenship," the DNC said in a statement.

The Indonesian couple had ties to the Indonesian conglomerate the Lippo Group, because Soraya Wiriadinata's late father was a major investor. The Lippo Group's executive, James Riady, had several Oval Office meetings with President Clinton.

These contributions were solicited by controversial fund-raiser and former Lippo executive, John Huang, the Asian financier who was present for at least one of these meetings.

Federal investigations under way

The DNC already had returned 16 questionable donations totaling more than $1 million. The $450,000 donation is the largest returned so far.

More than half of the contributions were returned because the money came from overseas, or because the donors apparently did not contribute their own funds. It remains unclear whether the suspect donations were taken by mistake, or whether they were the result of criminal conduct.

All the donations returned were solicited by Huang. Huang is a former U.S. Commerce Department employee and former U.S. executive of the Lippo Group. The Commerce Department is investigating Huang's campaign fund-raising activities, and the Federal Election Commission is investigating donations with links to the Lippo Group.

The Justice Department may also get involved in the issue. Attorney General Janet Reno announced two weeks ago that she would form a task force to look into allegations of wrongdoing, and determine the extent of the problem.

Depending on the task force findings, the department could appoint an independent counsel to further investigate the DNC's campaign-funding practices. It may also ask the FBI to interview some donors about claims that contributions made in their names actually came from other people, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

Kantor denies charges of wrongdoing

Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor Saturday charged Rep. Ben Gilman, R-New York, with playing politics and improperly disclosing sensitive documents about the ongoing Huang investigation. Gilman is chairman of the House International Relations Committee.

In an interview with CNN, Kantor denied Gilman's claims that the Commerce Department had intentionally withheld telephone logs for Huang until after the November 5 presidential election.

A letter from Gilman to Kantor dated November 18, 1996, says that telephone logs received on November 13 "reveal at least 70 telephone calls from John Huang to the Lippo Bank in Los Angeles during the time that he worked at the Department of Commerce. They also reveal a pattern of calls to prominent Little Rock entrepreneurs and lawyers with extensive financial interests in Asia."

"The only problem with the chairman's letter is that it's not factual. Other than that, it was welcome," Kantor said.

Kantor claimed the request for a more legible copy of the Huang phone logs did not reach his department until October 30, and that it was physically and bureaucratically impossible to get them to Gilman's committee before the election.

Kantor also said he had no knowledge of the most recently returned Huang-solicited donation, because he was not involved in the 1996 Clinton campaign. Kantor ran the Clinton campaign in 1992.