Lippo Group homepage Washington Post: Chinese funding coverage Politics Now: Scandal Sheet

THE Chinese spying-and-funding scandal enveloping President Clinton deepened yesterday after two key witnesses refused to give evidence and two others fled the country.

John Huang, a Clinton appointee with possible connections to Chinese military intelligence, refused to provide documents requested by congressional investigators. But he indicated that he might relent if granted immunity from prosecution.

Webster Hubbell, a former partner of Hillary Clinton at the Rose law firm, who has just been released from prison for fraud in the Whitewater scandal, refused to hand over papers detailing $350,000 (£214,000) of suspected "hush money" he received after leaving the government.

Charles Yah Lin Trie, an Arkansas restaurateur who took a Chinese arms dealer to the White House, and Pauline Kanchanalak raised nearly $1 million of suspect contributions for Mr Clinton and the Democrats. They are believed to be in Asia, having left instructions with their lawyer to ignore subpoenas for documents.

These evasions are certain to deepen suspicion that Mr Clinton's benefactors have something to hide. The fear is that Asian, specifically Chinese, money was funnelled into Mr Clinton's re-election campaign, with at least tacit understanding that this would improve the chances of a pro-China US foreign policy.

Mr Huang is a former executive of the Lippo Group, a Chinese-Indonesian conglomerate which is a partner of China Resources, a company owned by the People's Liberation Army and is seen as a front for Chinese military intelligence.

During his first term of office, Mr Clinton appointed Mr Huang to the Commerce Department, where he acquired high-level security clearance, received 37 intelligence briefings and yet maintained close contact with Lippo. He phoned them 70 times, sometimes on the same day, as he obtained classified documents.

Some $1.2 million he raised for the Democrats had to be returned because the donors either could not be identified or else were known to be illegal.

The documents Mr Hubbell is refusing to release are related to fees he was given. They include $250,000 from Lippo, paid immediately after he resigned in disgrace as associate attorney general in the Justice Department, but before pleading guilty to fraud in the Whitewater investigation. Investigators want to know if the money was intended to persuade him to be unco-operative with Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor.

Mr Trie became friends with Mr Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas, and raised $640,000 for the President's legal defence fund. The money, delivered in cash in two large envelopes, was later returned because its source was not revealed.

It was Mr Trie who brought a Chinese national, Wang Jun, to the White House. Mr Wang is the head of Poly Technologies, identified by undercover customs agents as the supplier of 2,000 AK-47 assault rifles to American street gangs. Mrs Kanchanalak is a Thai businesswoman whose $250,000 contribution was returned because its source was not identified.

16 February 1997: Clinton's Chinese takeaway

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