Federal prosecutors detailed the alleged foreign lobbying schemes carried out by Imaad Zuberi in a lengthy memo on Tuesday, alleging the Southern California campaign fundraiser who donated to Democrats and Republicans concealed work for shadowy interests around the world.
Zuberi, 42, pleaded guilty in October to charges of tax evasion, making nearly $1 million in illegal campaign contributions using straw donations and foreign funds and falsifying records of his extensive work as a foreign agent on behalf of Sri Lanka as well as lobbying for individuals and governments from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, Bahrain, and Libya. The Justice Department said Zuberi repeatedly violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act in receiving millions of dollars from foreign actors and lobbying Congress on their behalf.
“Zuberi’s repeated conduct constitutes an egregious series of FARA violations. The offenses involved prohibited activities on behalf of numerous foreign governments, entities, and individuals that transpired over the course of several years. The violations were part of a larger surreptitious effort to route foreign money into U.S. elections and to use it to corrupt U.S. policy-making processes,” prosecutors said. “His crimes not only involved the violation of federal election laws and prohibitions on lobbying, but schemes to deceive the United States Congress as to the actions of another nation, defraud clients, and evade the payment of millions of dollars in taxes.”
Prosecutors also highlighted Zuberi’s work in 2014 and 2015 for Ukrainian oligarch Dimitry Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch whom the Justice Department has attempted to extradite from Austria for years on charges of bribery, racketeering, and money laundering. Firtash is represented by conservative lawyers Joe diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, who are associates of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and were roped into the Democrat-led Ukraine-related impeachment effort against Trump last year.
Prosecutors said Zuberi’s lobbying for Firtash netted him $1 million and that it involved assisting with Firtash’s legal defense, labeling the prosecution against him politically motivated and helping create, with congressional support, a privately funded “Ukraine development fund” to generate business opportunities for Firtash’s companies in Ukraine after the collapse of its pro-Russia government.
The Justice Department said Zuberi’s plea deal requires him to “satisfy any and all obligations under FARA prior to sentencing” but said that “the defendant has made no such filings.” Prosecutors said if Zuberi doesn’t make the necessary filings before sentencing, then “the government believes the Court should consider this an aggravating factor in determining his sentence.”
The sentencing hearing for Zuberi is scheduled for May 18.
A lawyer for Zuberi did not immediately return the Washington Examiner‘s request for comment.
For years, Zuberi donated mostly to Democrats before throwing large sums at President Trump’s inaugural committee after his win in 2016. Zuberi was a top fundraiser for President Barack Obama, and, when Sheikh Mohammed Al Rahbani and his business associate gave Zuberi $850,000 to donate to Obama’s 2012 reelection inauguration, a transaction illegal under U.S. law, prosecutors say he actually only donated $97,500 of it to Obama before pocketing the rest for himself. The Californian was also a top fundraiser for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and was listed as a “Hillblazer” after raising over $100,000 for her 2016 campaign.
After Clinton lost, the American venture capitalist pivoted quickly to the GOP, donating $1.1 million to various Republicans in the months after Trump’s victory, including a $900,000 donation through his Avenue Ventures LLC company to Trump’s inaugural committee, which has come under scrutiny for its foreign sourcing, a violation of federal campaign finance laws. Zuberi was separately charged with obstruction of justice in January by prosecutors in New York for impeding their investigation into his Trump donations and into which foreign nationals were trying to pump money into U.S. politics.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Central California was unsparing in its 28-page sentencing recommendation memo on Wednesday, detailing Zuberi’s extensive evasion of FARA and calling upon the Los Angeles federal court to send a message about foreign interference in politics.
“Defendant explained to his clients that funneling foreign money into U.S. elections and organizations for the benefit of government officials was the ‘way America works.’ The Court can reject that proposition by imposing a sentence announcing that America loathes such schemes and that illegal foreign interference in our policy-making processes must stop,” prosecutors urged.
The Justice Department said Zuberi’s “criminal enterprise demanded secrecy.” Prosecutors reminded the court that FARA “requires the identification of all foreign principals on whose behalf the registrant is acting, foreign monies received by the registrant, the dispersal of such funds, political activities (such as lobbying) engaged in by the registrant, and campaign contributions made by the registrant and associated individuals” and said that Zuberi had not followed any of those guidelines.
“Truthful FARA disclosures would have revealed defendant’s receipt of millions of dollars from foreign sources, the specific lobbying and public relations efforts performed, and the millions of dollars of political contributions he made to the officials he was lobbying,” the DOJ wrote. “Zuberi could not influence and manipulate U.S. government officials without concealing his foreign agency.”
Prosecutors said Zuberi’s “entire business model consisted of soliciting foreign governments, entities, and individuals for money — part of which was earmarked for illegal campaign contributions, part of which was used to engage in unregistered and non-transparent lobbying and public relations activities, and part of which was used to pay Zuberi — in return for Zuberi wielding influence with members of Congress and the Executive Branch under the false pretense that he acted independently and in the best interest of the United States.”
A specific prison sentence recommendation was not made, but prosecutors noted “the breadth of Zuberi’s FARA violations exceeds that” of numerous other convicted criminals, including former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was sentenced to 60 months in prison for his FARA-connected crimes.
