That would be when it's the Clintons who are doing the receiving. The givers, on the other hand, didn't fare all that well. Last week's release of 11,046 pages of Mrs. Clinton's White House activity calendars tell a fascinating story. It turns out that in March of 1993 Indonesian businessman Mochtar Riady flew to Little Rock to have dinner with first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton on the occasion of her being named "Arkansan of the Year." At the time Riady's company, the $12 billion Indonesia-based Lippo Group, was urging the U.S. to end its 30-year trade embargo with Vietnam.
Five days after the March 4, 1993, dinner at the Excelsior Hotel, Mr. Riady took the embargo question directly to President Clinton, saying in a four-page letter that its demise would bring political reforms in that communist country.
By that time, Mr. Riady's banking conglomerate, the $12 billion Indonesia-based Lippo Group, its subsidiaries and its employees, including his son James and executive John Huang had funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to Mr. Clinton's 1992 presidential race and had guaranteed a $3 million last-minute loan to a cash-short Clinton campaign just before the crucial New York primary in 1992.
Within six months of the dinner, the Lippo firm opened its first offices in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, and a further five months later Mr. Clinton signed an executive order lifting the embargo, which had been in effect since 1964...
...LippoBank California, a state-chartered bank affiliated with the Lippo Group, pleaded guilty in 2001 to 86 misdemeanor counts charging that its agents made illegal foreign campaign contributions to Democrats from 1988 through 1994.
James Riady paid a record $8.6 million in criminal fines in 2001 and also pleaded guilty to a felony charge of conspiring to defraud the U.S. by unlawfully reimbursing campaign donors with foreign corporate funds in violation of federal election law.
Mr. Huang pleaded guilty in 1999 to a felony charge of conspiring with other Lippo employees to make campaign contributions and reimburse employees with corporate funds or money from Indonesia. He was sentenced to one year probation and fined $10,000.
Comments