Mystery firm linked to US lobbyist scandal

http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=12&art_id=10441&sid=6326812&con_type=3
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
(image placeholder)

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 execut
(image placeholder)

ive 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.