Hip-hop star Pras Michel, a former member of The Fugees, was found guilty on Wednesday (April 26th) in Washington for his role in an illegal influence campaign led by a Malaysian financier at the heart of a vast corruption scandal. The 50-year-old Haitian-American artist was found guilty of all the charges for which he was prosecuted, after a media trial lasting several weeks which notably saw actor Leonardo DiCaprio parade for bear witness.
Pras “Michel played a central role in a vast plot to influence senior government officials,” said Harry Lidsk, a representative of the Ministry of Justice. Between 2012 and 2017, the hip-hop star reportedly received some $100 million from Malaysian Low Taek Jho, considered the mastermind of the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB scandal. According to the American authorities, this large sum would have been used in part for contributions to the presidential campaign of Barack Obama in 2012. Donations from abroad being prohibited in the United States, they would have been made via nominees and offshore companies.
Pras Michel was notably found guilty of conspiracy, forgery and use of forgery and of having served as a concealed agent of a foreign government, offenses for which he faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, indicated the ministry of US Justice in a statement. He was also found guilty of having carried out in 2017 illicit lobbying for the benefit of China with the administration of Donald Trump to request the repatriation of a Chinese dissident, the billionaire Guo Wengui. Accused of defrauding thousands of investors to enrich himself, Guo Wengui was arrested in March in New York for financial fraud.
Low Taek Jho, the Malaysian businessman at the heart of this vast scandal, was charged in 2018 with corruption and money laundering linked to the looting of the 1MDB fund, supposed to contribute to the economic development of Malaysia. On the run, he is now probably in China. The financier is notably accused, alongside other people, of having used the money from this fund to buy luxury residences, yachts or even works of art and to surround himself with music stars, cinema, in particular by financing the film The Wolf of Wall Street, a feature film released in 2013 which won an Oscar for Leonardo DiCaprio. The actor recounted during the trial to the jurors the decadent parties financed by Low Taek Jho and said he remembered the latter assuring “that he wanted to make a significant donation to the Democratic Party”, referring to “20 to 30 million dollars . I said, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of money…'”
