John Huang

John Huang was the chief representative in the United States of the Lippo Group of Indonesia, an official of the Commerce Department in 1994 and 1995, and a fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee in 1996. He was born in Fujian province in China, raised in Taiwan, and naturalized as an American citizen in 1976.¹

Banking

Huang worked for the First National Bank of Louisville from 1979 and for Union Planters National Bank of Memphis from 1981, which sent him to its Hong Kong office in 1983. There he met James Riady. From February 1985 he was at once vice president and director of international banking at the Hong Kong Chinese Bank and vice president and Far East manager of Worthen Bank in Little Rock, which the Riady family then controlled jointly with the family of Jackson Stephens. He reported to Riady in both posts. In 1986 Riady made him president of the Bank of Trade in California, renamed LippoBank. A colleague, Maeley Tom, described him as "the political power that advises the Riady family." The Riady company Hip Hing Holdings paid him more than 750,000 dollars for 1993 and 1994.¹²

Contributions, 1992

A Senate committee found that in 1992 and 1993 Huang sent money of foreign origin to the Democratic National Committee through three Riady companies. Hip Hing Holdings gave 50,000 dollars to the committee's Victory Fund on August 12, 1992, and was repaid from Jakarta. San Jose Holdings and Toy Center Holdings gave 15,000 dollars each. The government's later charges against Riady describe money wired to his account at LippoBank and handed to Huang in cash "shortly after Riady pledged $1 million in support of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton's campaign for the Presidency," between August and October 1992, and a "fictitious 'bonus'" paid to Huang by a foreign Lippo company between January 1993 and February 1994.¹³

The Commerce Department

On June 23, 1994, Riady, Huang, and the Little Rock lawyer Mark Grobmyer met President Clinton at ten in the morning. Riady had breakfast before the meeting and lunch after it with Webster Hubbell, who had resigned as associate attorney general in April, and 100,000 dollars from the Lippo company Hong Kong China Limited reached Hubbell's account by June 27. A House committee wrote: "The hiring occurred around the same time as John Huang finally was approved for a position at the Department of Commerce." Riady and Huang refused to cooperate with the committee, and Hubbell invoked the Fifth Amendment.²

The department's security office gave Huang an interim top secret clearance on January 27, 1994, on "a records check alone and no interviews or other investigation of his background," while he was still vice chairman of LippoBank, and six months before his first day at the department on July 18. The final clearance followed in October. His briefer, John Dickerson of the Office of Intelligence Liaison, "was in fact an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency," working there "posing as a Department of Energy official." "Between October 1994, when they began, and November 1995, when they ended, Huang received a total of 37 one-on-one briefings," at ten to fifteen pieces of intelligence each. In August 1994 alone records show 31 calls between Huang and the office of a Lippo subsidiary whose president gave the Democratic National Committee 15,000 dollars that month.¹

"Much more striking," the committee wrote, "was the Committee's discovery that while at Commerce, Huang maintained access to a separate office across the street at Stephens, Inc. Huang used this office regularly, including its phone and facsimile facilities, and he frequently received packages at the office. No one at Commerce, not his secretary, not his supervisors, not his coworkers, nobody, knew that he had such an office." The office was on the sixth floor of the Willard Building at 1455 Pennsylvania Avenue and was headed by Vernon Weaver, later ambassador to the European Union, whose secretary had instructions to call Huang when faxes or packages came for him. He arrived, witnesses said, with an envelope, a folder, or a small briefcase. The committee concluded that this, with his contacts with Lippo, "raises the threshold question of whether Huang passed along classified information to those who should not have received it. The Committee is unable to answer the question to its satisfaction." The Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office gave him a further top secret clearance as a consultant on December 14, 1995, after he had gone to the Democratic National Committee. The Commerce clearance was withdrawn on January 25, 1996.¹

Lippo's principal partner in China, the committee reported, was China Resources, "a company wholly-owned and operated by the PRC government," of which "intelligence officials have confirmed in the press that the Chinese intelligence establishment is heavily involved in the operation." In 1991 Huang was sent to Beijing to negotiate a joint bid with China Resources for the Hong Kong branch of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. On October 7, 1993, he wrote to the office of Vice President Al Gore with thanks for receiving the chairman of China Resources, Shen Jueren, at the White House.¹

Plea

On August 12, 1999, Huang pleaded guilty in the federal court in Los Angeles to a felony charge that he conspired with other Lippo employees "to make campaign contributions and reimburse employees with corporate funds or with funds from Indonesia." He was sentenced to a year's probation, 500 hours of community service, and a fine of 10,000 dollars, and was directed to go on cooperating. LippoBank pleaded guilty in 2001 to 86 misdemeanor counts for contributions its agents Riady and Huang had made from 1988 to 1994.³