-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- January 26, 2000 Politics & Policy Tucker Worked for Indonesian Firm Run by the Chief of Lippo Group By DAVID S. CLOUD and JAY SOLOMON Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Former Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker, who was pressured by Whitewater prosecutors into cooperating in their investigation of President Clinton, was hired last year by an Indonesian cable-television company controlled by a friend of Mr. Clinton. The disclosure that Mr. Clinton's friend, Indonesian businessman James Riady, had dealings with Mr. Tucker is a late echo of the scandals that have colored much of Mr. Clinton's tenure. Mr. Riady previously had attracted the prosecutors' notice for paying large consulting fees to Webster Hubbell, another figure in the Whitewater case and friend of Mr. Clinton. Investigators probing the Whitewater land deal that preceded Mr. Clinton's election in 1992 had suspected that Mr. Riady and other Clinton associates paid Mr. Hubbell for his silence in the probe, though no charges were ever brought. Mr. Hubbell eventually pleaded guilty to tax charges. Mr. Tucker was convicted in two cases brought by Whitewater prosecutors, in 1996 and 1998, and then began cooperating with them in exchange for leniency. Mr. Tucker's dealings with Mr. Riady began in 1996, the year after he was first indicted. Mr. Tucker's wife, Betty, invested $6.5 million in cable equipment that was turned over to a Riady-affiliated Indonesian cable company, said Joe Giroir, a Little Rock investor in the company and a former Hillary Clinton law partner. Mrs. Tucker received a guaranteed minimum 5% annual return. Mr. Tucker also did consulting for the company. Mr. Riady, whose family controls Lippo Group, of Jakarta, Indonesia, has since taken control of the business through a company called Tanjung Bangun Semesta. In March 1999, two months before Mr. Tucker was sentenced in the second Whitewater case, he was hired to help run TBS. In addition to hiring Mr. Tucker, who once owned a U.S. cable company, TBS bought Mrs. Tucker's cable equipment, paying her with a minority stake in TBS, Mr. Giroir said. Mr. Giroir said he arranged for Mr. Tucker's hiring. "It was a strictly merit situation," Mr. Giroir said. He said he and Mr. Riady never discussed whether, given Mr. Tucker's status as a Whitewater witness, the hiring would raise questions. "It was never anything that was considered in that light." Messrs. Riady and Giroir are longtime business associates and have turned up in other Clinton controversies. Both were mentioned in a 1998 House committee report about the Hubbell payments for paying $12,000 for Mr. Hubbell's daughter's college tuition. The two men also played roles in the controversy surrounding fund-raising abuses during Mr. Clinton's 1996 re-election. They participated in a meeting with the president that resulted in the transfer of John Huang, a former Lippo executive, from the Commerce Department to the Democratic Party, where he oversaw aggressive Asian-American fund raising and helped spark the foreign-money scandal. Lawyers for Mr. Riady are now conducting plea negotiations with Justice Department prosecutors investigating that scandal. They have been focusing on him since Mr. Huang plead guilty last year and implicated him in reimbursing employees for donations. The case has intensified recently, with Attorney General Janet Reno asking the Indonesian government for help and Indonesian authorities saying this week that they plan to investigate Mr. Riady. Lippo Group executives confirmed that Indonesian officials plan to question Mr. Riady about U.S. campaign donations. Mr. Riady's lawyer, Earl Silbert, said he wasn't aware of his client's dealings with Mr. Tucker. Efforts to reach Mr. and Mrs. Tucker were unsuccessful. Whitewater prosecutors apparently were unaware of the Riady-Tucker dealings. The Office of Independent Counsel declined to comment. The charges against Mr. Tucker related to his 1987 purchase and sale of interests in cable-TV systems. The indictment charged him and a partner with fraudulently obtaining loans to finance the deals from the Small Business Administration and with conspiring to avoid taxes. Mr. Tucker resigned as governor in July 1996, after a jury convicted him of some of the charges, for which he was sentenced to 18 months home detention. In 1998, he pleaded guilty to other charges and began cooperating with prosecutors who wanted to question him about Mr. Clinton's role in allegedly fraudulent transactions related to his Whitewater land investment. When Mr. Tucker was sentenced last May to probation and ordered to pay $1 million in restitution in the second case, one of the prosecutors said he had cooperated and "helped exonerate some people [and] helped incriminate some people." ================================================================= Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> *Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day. ================================================================= <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. 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