How the disgraced James Riady, barred from travel to the U.S., made it back

In March 2004, James Riady, an Indonesian tycoon and devout Christian, received an honorary doctorate from Ouachita Baptist University in Arkansas. The university -- which has a scholarship program funded by the Indonesian -- didn't announce the honor. Nor did Riady pick up the diploma in person: He'd been barred from America after pleading guilty in 2001 to a "conspiracy to defraud the United States" through illegal contributions to the campaigns of Bill Clinton and other Democrats.

Last year, however, the Indonesian mogul finally made it to Arkansas. He traveled there during the first of two previously unreported trips he made in 2009 to the United States. He was allowed in only after receiving a waiver from a rule that forbids entry to foreigners guilty of "a crime involving moral turpitude," a term that government lawyers generally interpret to include fraud.

Riady's return to the United States poses a prickly question for Hillary Clinton's State Department: How and why did a foreign billionaire stained by Clinton-era scandals get a U.S. visa after being kept out for so long under the Bush administration?

The ethnic Chinese magnate's ties to the Clintons have been a source of heated controversy since the late 1990s, when Riady became embroiled in one of the murkiest episodes of the Clinton presidency -- a campaign fundraising scandal that caused a big political ruckus in Washington amid Republican Party allegations, never proved, of meddling by China's intelligence services in American politics.

The saga brought Riady and his family-run conglomerate, Lippo Group, an $8.6 million fine, the biggest penalty in the history of U.S. campaign finance violations.

A close look at Riady's quiet American comeback, along with dramas back home in Indonesia that preceded it, reveals how one

If you ever want to get a reaction from a public official in Utah, forget polygamy. Instead, mention James Riady. A Clinton payoff to him robbed Utah schools for generations to come:

Mr. Riady’s influence peddling and political-favor bartering paid off in 1996 when President Clinton designated 1.7 million acres of southern Utah as the Grand-Escalante National Monument. The Clean-Air Act eliminates the use of many types of coal by U.S. power companies with the exception of hyper-low sulfur coal. This type of coal is known to exist in only three locations: 1. an extremely remote area of Colombia; 2. Kalimantan Island in Indonesia and 3. Grand-Escalante National Monument. The creation of this national monument gave the coal deposits on Kalimantan Island that are controlled by the Riady family and the Indonesian government a near monopoly on the sale of the sought-after coal.

“President Clinton explained that the creation of the Grand-Escalante National Monument was done out of environmental concern to protect the land from development. However, the Court, respectfully, must conclude that there was no such environmental concern regarding Grand-Escalante National Monument. In 1997, the Clinton-Gore administration awarded Conoco Oil Corporation an oil-drilling contract for the Grand-Escalante National Monument. Mr. Riady appears to have successfully cashed-in a political favor with the Clinton administration in order to gain a coal monopoly.”

http://www.aim.org/aim-report/aim-report-the-case-against-james-riady/

By Utah law, the profits from that land were to go to Utah public schools.

“Mr. Riady’s influence peddling and political-favor bartering paid off in 1996 when President Clinton designated 1.7 million acres of southern Utah as the Grand-Escalante National Monument.”

Yup:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/724170/posts
That Trillion-Dollar Ripoff— Clinton’s Utah Coal Deal
various websites | 7-29-02 | The Heavy Equipment Guy

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