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Skriven 2006-01-21 09:41:26 av BOB SAKOWSKI (1:123/140)
Ärende: Republican Scandal news
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News of the Abramoff republican scandal.  Of, for and by republicans.

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_print.asp?art_id=10441&sid=6326812

Mystery firm linked to US lobbyist scandal

US government investigators probing Washington's explosive Congressional
bribery scandal centered on disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff recently
visited Hong Kong, according to a witness interviewed by the authorities.

ZachColeman

Saturday, January 21, 2006

US government investigators probing Washington's explosive Congressional
bribery scandal centered on disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff recently
visited Hong Kong, according to a witness interviewed by the authorities.

The investigators reportedly are chasing convoluted money trails leading to
Abramoff and government officials he sought to influence.

Among the likely subjects of interest here is a previously unknown company
called Rose Garden Holdings. In May 2002, Abramoff notified the US Senate
that Rose Garden had hired him and Greenberg Traurig, his firm at the time,
to represent Rose Garden's "interests before federal agencies and [the] US
Congress."

Abramoff recorded Rose Garden's address as a luxury flat in Tai Hang, above
Causeway Bay, and its business as international trade. Over the next year
and a half, the records show, Rose Garden paid Greenberg Traurig US$1.4
million (HK$10.92 million) for putting its case to the Senate, House of
Representatives and US Department of Labor.

Hong Kong's Companies Registry has no record of Rose Garden Holdings; nor
does the telephone directory. The apartment listed by Abramoff as Rose
Garden's premises has been owned since 1992 by Luen Thai Shipping and
Trading, according to the Land Registry.

Luen Thai Holdings and its controlling shareholders, the Tan family, were
leading beneficiaries of Abramoff's Washington lobbying.

Luen Thai officials and spokesmen referred queries about Abramoff and Rose
Garden to chief executive Henry Tan, but Tan declined through his secretary to
be interviewed, citing his travel schedule.

Luen Thai Holdings, which held a HK$669.4 million initial public stock offering
in 2004, was built on the business of sewing together clothing for top US
brand-names such as Liz Claiborne, with the assistance of young women from
China and other Asian countries on the US-controlled Pacific island of Saipan.

The foundations of the company's profitable niche are loopholes in US law
that allow free migration to the island, set its minimum wage below
mainland US levels and allow clothing sewn there to carry the "Made in USA"
label and be exempt from quotas and tariffs.

Before the Tan family had friends in Washington, they made enemies. In
1991, the US Labor Department sued six Tan companies for paying 1,350
mainly Chinese workers less than Saipan's minimum wage and forcing them to
work up to 90 hours a week without required overtime pay.

The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration levied more than
US$240,000 in fines against the six Tan companies the following year for
violations including locking and blocking factory and dormitory fire doors
and other unsanitary and hazardous conditions in the factories and dorms.

After the charges were made public, clothing giant Levi Strauss & Co and
retailer The Gap halted purchases from the Tans.

US Representative George Miller, a Democrat from California, launched
committee hearings into labor abuses on the island and ways to close the
loopholes surrounding Saipan.

The Tans settled the overtime suit without admitting any wrongdoing by
agreeing to pay the workers US$9 million. They also settled the health and
safety charges by pledging US$1.3 million in repairs and paying a US$76,000
penalty.

After this episode - and ones with other island manufacturers - Saipan's
government hired Abramoff to fend off repeated threats to the island's
status in Washington.

Abramoff took up the garment makers' cause enthusiastically, taking
congressmen and their staff and families to Saipan to enjoy its tropical
pleasures and hear the manufacturers' case for protection. Abramoff and his
staff trumpeted the clothiers' agenda to administration officials,
targeting unsympathetic ones for retribution. A syndicated US newspaper
columnist last month admitted receiving payments from Abramoff for writing
favorable stories about Saipan and other clients.

Between 1995 and 2002, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands,
centered on Saipan, paid Abramoff at least US$8 million, according to
commonwealth audits and Senate records. But the high-priced help became a
lightning rod for controversy on the cash-strapped islands. Twice the
government dropped Abramoff's services.

Rose Garden's hiring of Abramoff came four months after the government, now
under a new governor, ended his contract for the last time. During the
previous suspension, four business organizations in Saipan joined to
publicly form a new group that paid Abramoff US$2.4 million.

If Abramoff reported "Rose Garden Holdings" as his client, using its name
as a front for Luen Thai or other Saipan business interests, he may have
violated the US Lobbying Disclosure Act. Jan Witold Baran, a Washington
lawyer specializing in lobbying law, said the law requires identification
of the entity directing and funding lobbying activity.

Juan Babauta, who was succeeded on January 8 as Northern Marianas governor
by a former Tan Holdings executive, told the Saipan Tribune just before he
left office: "The Jack Abramoff investigation is obviously turning in the
direction of the CNMI."

According to an investigation published by The Washington Post three weeks
ago, records obtained by the newspaper reveal that Saipan garment makers,
including Tan, contributed US$500,000 to an organization called the US
Family Network between 1996 and 2001. Much of the organization's funding
was spent supporting other groups linked to Abramoff or indicted
Congressman Tom DeLay.

A series of e-mail messages between Abramoff and Willie Tan, Henry's
brother who heads up the family's ventures on site in Saipan, recently
obtained by Washington journalist Joshua Micah Marshall, appear to show
another financial link. According to a copy posted on Marshall's Web site,
Abramoff billed Tan US$223,679 in 2000 toward the annual rental of skyboxes
in three Washington-area stadiums and arenas.

Abramoff made frequent use of the skyboxes to entertain congressmen. The
e-mails indicate receipt of a first quarterly payment of US$55,919.75 and
show Tan directing a company finance executive to make the second quarterly
payment.
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