Democratic Fund-Raisers To Plead Guilty Couple Used ‘Straw Donors’ For Contributions For ‘94 Election

An Oklahoma couple who raised thousands of dollars for Democrats in recent years have agreed to plead guilty to arranging $50,000 in illegal contributions in the 1994 election, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

Under the agreement, the couple, Eugene K.H. and Nora T. Lum, each agreed to plead guilty to a single count of conspiring to contribute the funds illegally through intermediaries described in legal papers as “straw donors.”

The intermediaries generally were provided with money to make the donations or were reimbursed afterwards. In some cases, checks were written on a donor’s behalf without his or her knowledge.

The donations, including some contributions funneled through employees of the Lums’ Oklahoma gas pipeline company, Dynamic Energy Resources Inc., went to the campaigns of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and W. Stuart Price, an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress in Oklahoma. Kennedy later returned some of the contributions.

The Lums’ daughter, Trisha, agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor count charging that she acted as an illegal conduit for a $10,000 contribution to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

The lawyer for the Lums, Cono R. Namoroto, said Wednesday that the couple would plead guilty to the conspiracy charge, adding, “Nora and Gene accept full responsibility for their conduct and regret any harm they may have caused by their actions.”

The charge against the couple carries a maximum five-year sentence and a $250,000 fine.

Several law enforcement officials said Wednesday that the case represented the first prosecution of the far-reaching inquiry into campaign financing that has focused on how President Clinton raised money for his re-election last year.

But other lawyers, inside and outside the government, said the agreement represented the remnants of the investigation by Daniel S. Pearson, the independent prosecutor who had begun an inquiry into the personal finances of Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown that was closed after he was killed in a plane crash in Croatia in April 1996.

The Lums became active in Democratic politics in Hawaii in the 1980s. By 1993, they had moved to Oklahoma and had bought a pipeline company. Nora Lum became chairman and chief and executive officer and her husband was a director of the company.

By 1992, when Clinton was elected president, the Lums had emerged as important figures among Asian American fund-raisers for the Democratic Party.

White House officials would not comment Wednesday on the plea agreement.

The Justice Department’s public integrity section, which is also leading the wider campaign finance investigation, brought the charges in the case.

The government said the Lums defrauded the United States by thwarting the legal functions of the Federal Election Commission and by concealing their actions in willfully submitting false statements to the commission.