LOS ANGELES: As an elite political fundraiser, Imaad Zuberi had the ear of top Democrats and Repub­li­cans alike — a reach that included private meetings with then-vice president Joe Biden and VIP access at Donald Trump’s inauguration.

He lived a lavish, jet-setting lifestyle, staying at fine hotels and hosting lawmakers and diplomats at four-star restaurants. Foreign am­­bassadors turned to Zuberi to get face time in Congress. A CIA officer called him “the best connected person I know”, marvelling at the depth of his Rolodex.

His Facebook account was filled with pictures of him next to the powerful and famous: having dinner with Hillary Clinton and Robert De Niro and rubbing shoulders with Trump’s then-chief of staff Reince Priebus. Zuberi raised huge amounts for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election before becoming a top donor to the Trump inauguration committee.

But federal prosecutors say Zuberi’s life was built on a series of lies and the lucrative enterprise of funding American political campaigns and profiting from the resulting influence.

Everyone wants to come to Washington to meet people, Zuberi said in a 2015 email, seeking a meet-and-greet between the president of Guinea and a powerful congressman.

Imaad Zuberi’s story throws up an embarrassing question: how does a con man enjoy the trust of officials at the highest levels of US government

Prosecutors describe Zuberi as a mercenary political donor who gave to anyone, often using illegal straw donor cutouts he thought could help him. Pay to play, he explained to clients, was just how America works.

Zuberi’s story underscores how loosely regulated campaign finance and foreign lobbying laws are and raises an embarrassing question: How does such a cynical fraudster find favour with so many officials at the highest levels of the government?

Zuberi pleaded guilty last year to campaign finance violations, failing to register as a foreign agent and tax evasion. He also admitted obstructing a New York-based federal investigation into whether foreign nationals unlawfully contributed to Trump’s inaugural committee. He faces several years in prison and is set to be sentenced next year.

But the US Justice Depart­ment’s probe has left many unanswered questions about Zuberi’s foreign entanglements.

Aside from a minor associate who pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour tax charge, no one who assisted Zuberi has been charged.

And the government has not publicly named the politicians who benefited from Zuberi’s donations.

But an investigation identified associates, enablers and targets of Zuberi’s influence efforts, drawing on private emails, court docum­e­nts, campaign finance rep­o­rts, and interviews with almost 40 people.

The documents and interviews show Zuberi used an unsophisticated straw donor scheme in which he paid for others donations with his cre­­­dit cards and used cutouts that included a dead person and names of people prosecutors say he made up. The Justice Department said Zuberi, over a five-year period, funnelled nearly $1 million in illegal campaign donations.

His donations gave Zuberi first-name access to top foreign and American diplomats and well as members of Congress who controlled foreign policy, such as Senators Bob Casey and Lindsey Graham.

Unregistered agent

Prosecutors say Zuberi worked for years as an unregistered foreign agent for at least six countries and officials, including a Ukrainian oligarch close to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Zuberi also used his extensive ties to US elected officials to pass on potentially useful information to foreign officials, including information related to Biden. He also kept in close contact with a west coast-based CIA officer.

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have asked judge Virginia Phillips to sentence Zuberi to at least 10 years behind bars at his sentencing on Jan 7. They also want him to pay a $10 million fine and nearly $16 million restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.

Zuberi says he deserves a much lighter punishment and disputes the scope of his wrongdoing.

Zuberi said he helped facilitate donations from foreign sources, but added federal law in that area is unclear and that he received conflicting advice from various campaigns about the legality of such donations. Zuberi admits he did unregistered lobbying for Sri Lanka, but said the type of work he did for other countries and officials didn’t require him to register as a foreign agent.

The government really, really wants to make an example of Mr Zuberi well beyond that merited by his actions, his lawyers argued in court filings.

In recent months, Zuberi has secretly petitioned Phillips to credit him for law enforcement leads and intelligence he says he’s provided to the federal government. He contends in sealed court records that he has given usable national security-related information to multiple agencies.

Erdogan factor

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has been among the most aggressive foreign officials in trying to shape US foreign policy in recent years. Other well-known officials like Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and former national security adviser Michael Flynn have advanced Erdogan’s interests.

Zuberi was also in the mix, private emails and court records show.

Turkey has a poor record on censorship and suppressing free speech and, in 2015, more than 30 members of the US House of Represen­tatives sponsored a resolution urging respect for freedom of expression and human rights in the country.

Turkey’s ambassador to the US, Serdar Kilic, obtained a draft of the resolution before it was filed and asked Zuberi to help kill it, saying in an email that its advancement would be extremely counterproductive before a general election in Turkey.

Zuberi responded a few hours later, saying he thought Erdogan was a hero and would be happy to help Kilic lobby the two most powerful members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee: then-Republican Chairman Ed Royce and Democratic ranking member Eliot Engel.

“Why don’t you come to Los Angeles as my guest and I can have you meet both over dinner in private?” Zuberi wrote.

Zuberi was a regular donor and cultivated ties to both congressmen. He was exceptionally close with Engel, who gave Zuberi early heads-ups on legislation he intended to file and shared other details that could be useful to Zuberi.

“I should be filing a Syria bill. We are also going to file an Iran bill. Again, thank you for everything. I am glad that we agree so much,” Engel said in a 2013 email to Zuberi.

Zuberi actively lobbied to kill the resolution related to Turkey and was able to flip one of the sponsors, prosecutors said. The legislation died in committee.

Neither Royce, who has retired from Congress, nor Engel, who lost a primary earlier this year, agreed to an interview with the AP, but said through spokespeople that Zuberi’s lobbying efforts on Turkey, or any other matter, never had any impact on policy decisions.

Setting up meetings isn’t the same as exerting influence.

Former US Rep. Alan Grayson, the resolutions lead sponsor, said he had no idea what was going on behind the scenes to kill the resolution.

An internal Trump inaugural document showed that Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was listed as one of Zuberi’s guests at a VIP inaugural event, and deleted pictures from his Facebook page showing him posing with Cavusoglu and Kilic at a black-tie event.

Lobbying for Qatar

Prosecutors said in recent filings that Zuberi also secretly lobbied the White House and Congress on behalf of Qatar, a small gas-rich monarchy that has engaged in a multimillion-dollar battle for influence during the Trump administration with its bitter rival, the United Arab Emirates.

In the memos, prosecutors say Zuberi made $9.8 million from the Qatari government.

Law enforcement officials say Zuberi’s lobbying for Qatar is still under investigation. They have not released details about his work but said US policy was changed in line with Qatar’s interests.

Zuberi accompanied Qatari officials on a trade mission to South Carolina in 2018 as well as Qatar’s foreign minister to Trump Tower in New York in Dec 2016, a month after Trump won the election.

A spokesman for Zuberi at the time, Steve Rabinowitz, said last year that Zuberi was meeting the Qataris elsewhere in Manhattan to discuss investment opportunities when he accompanied them to Trump Tower.

Campaign donations, many of them illegal, were often a key part of Zuberi’s lobbying effort, prosecutors said. He used straw donors to get around campaign donation limits in a scheme that was not particularly well hidden.

Zuberi used the same address for multiple members of his straw donor network: a nondescript warehouse east of Los Angeles that was home to his sister-in-law’s Chinese herbal medicine and acupuncture supply company. Among the names listed as giving from that address: a Saudi tycoon, a Kuwaiti educator, and a person prosecutors said Zuberi fabricated.

Prosecutors said Zuberi frequently used his mother as a straw donor, and campaign records show one donation several months after she died.

Sometimes Zuberi would make donations in straw donors’ names, but pay for them with his or his wife’s credit card.

Prosecutors note in sentencing memos that Zuberi donated about $225,000 including $78,000 from illegal straw donations to lawmakers as he persuaded them to write a letter to Bahrain expressing concern about the country’s harassment of US investors.

Prosecutors say in charging documents the letters were part of an elaborate scheme to dupe Congress and to put pressure on the Bahraini government on behalf of Esam Janahi, a businessman who was in a dispute with a high-ranking Bahraini official.

The 12 members of Cong­ress who wrote the letters are not named in court rec­ords. But we obtained copies of their letters, which were sent on official congressional letterheads and all used the same talking points.

Lawmakers who sent letters include Engel; Rep. Karen Bass, who was on the short-list to be Biden’s vice president; Rep Brad Sher­man, who may replace Engel as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was Democratic National Committee’s chairman at the time.

Our investigation found several instances where Zuberi-linked donations to lawmakers occurred within a few weeks or even days of him receiving something he sought in return.

Private emails show that, in 2014, Zuberi obtained letters from several congressmen he regularly donated to as part of an effort to oppose a Pakistani wind energy project that was receiving financial support from the US Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a government agency now known as the International Development Finance Corporation, which assists businesses looking to invest abroad.

A week after Zuberi and his wife gave $10,400 to Texas Rep. Ted Poe’s campaign account, the lawmaker sent a letter to OPIC questioning the wind project and asking to freeze any aid to Pakistan. Poe said he also met the agency’s director.

Poe, who left office last year, said he had a duty to investigate Zuberi’s claims of corruption related to the wind project. There was no quid pro quo, said Poe.

Sentencing memos and private emails show that one major aspect of Zuberi’s work was obtaining official letters from members of Congress inviting foreign officials to the US for visits.

Invitation for Zardari

That includes invitations for former president Asif Ali Zardari, who has used visits with top US lawmakers to boost his image back home after he left office in 2013; associates of Dmitry Firtash, a Putin-friendly oligarch fig­h­ting extradition to the Uni­ted States on federal bri­bery and racketeering charges.

Prosecutors say in sent­en­cing memos that Zuberi made $1 million doing unregistered lobbying for Firtash.

Greg Schultz, then a senior adviser to Biden, sent Zuberi an email arranging a Sunday morning coffee with the vice president at a Beverly Hills hotel in 2014. At the meeting, Zuberi pumped Biden for information about his views on Saudi Arabia and its objection to US negotiations with Iran, according to his emails.

Zuberi then reported back to a Saudi ambassador to the US that Biden said the Saudis are whining because they know North America will be energy-independent in a few years and their usefulness will be greatly dimi­nished for United States.

“It doesn’t seem like he is a fan of Saudi Arabia. We can discuss when we meet,” Zuberi said in an email.

Court records include a 2016 text message where Zuberi indicated he was paid handsomely by the Saudis.

“I get million times more from Saudis for doing less than I have done for Turkey,” Zuberi said.

An official from the Saudi embassy said it does not have any agreement or relationship with Zuberi and engages with a broad segment of Americans as a normal part of its activities.

Zuberi met Biden multiple times. Topics he says in emails he planned to discuss with the vice president, according to Zuberis emails, included Chinese-US relations, a Bahraini development and a potential Biden trip to Pakistan.

‘Best weapons in the world’

Prosecutors and Zuberi’s legal team have been feuding for months over his punishment. More than 100 filings have been made under seal, an unheard degree of secrecy for a sentencing fight in a supposedly non-national security case.

Our investigation found that Zuberi regularly exch­anged encrypted messages with a CIA officer, who once expressed amazement at his broad network of contacts.

A former foreign diplomat said Zuberi boasted of having helped the CIA with China and having smoothed relations for the ISI, referring to Pakistan’s intelligence agency.

In a 2013 email to a State Department official, Zuberi asked if he could set up meetings with members of Congress for a Libyan intelligence officer.

Because of the sensitive nature of this request, he needs to be handled through other channels, David McFarland, a high-ranking State Department official, responded to the email.

In his private emails, Zuberi frequently discussed selling US arms abroad.

In one email, Zuberi asked then-US ambassador to Pakistan Richard Olson for “talking points” before meeting lawmakers to discuss a potential arms sale.

“We make the best weapons in the world. Per our conversation, I will coordinate with our friends from Saudi Arabia and Kuwait,” Zuberi said in a 2015 email to Lin­den Blue, a co-owner of Gen­e­ral Atomics, as a deal to sell unarmed versions of the company’s drones to the UAE was near approval.

In the same email, Zuberi invited Blue over email to dinner with US senators on the armed services committee, which Blue agreed to. Thanks for the note, Blue replied, before agreeing to dates for the meetings with lawmakers.

Overwhelming majority

When Zuberi started giving money and rising in the political scene less than a decade ago, prosecutors said he was worth $1.5 million, with an unknown amount coming from foreign sources.

Currently, prosecutors estimate that his net worth is more than $30 million and said the overwhelming majority of it came from illegal activity.

Zuberi’s ability to obtain introductions to wealthy clients, politicians and business associates often began with false representations concerning his pedigree, education, experience, business, investment successes, and financial condition, prosecutors wrote.

The Federal Elections Commission has long been mired in partisan gridlock and, until recently, the Justice Department had all but ignored violations of foreign lobbying registration requirements. Between 1966 and 2015 the department brought just seven criminal cases for violating the law related to registering as a foreign lobbyist.

A key feature of the Trump era has been a mounting focus on foreign interference in US foreign policy, including multiple investigations of Russia’s high-tech efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.

But Zuberi’s story shows there are easier ways to try to bend American foreign policy than using sophisticated hacking tools.

Brendan Fischer, director of federal reform at the Campaign Legal Center, said it’s impossible to know how many other access brokers in Washington are operating like Zuberi.

Published in Dawn, December 1st, 2020