ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 1, 1996 TAG: 9612020074
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DONATIONS TO the Democratic Party began to flow within days of a company's creation in Little Rock. The owner: the business partner of a longtime friend of President Clinton.
Ever since James Riady went to Little Rock in the late 1970s and began making deals there on behalf of his Indonesia-based finance and real estate empire, the Arkansas connection to Asia has been strong.
So, it was not unusual when a Chinese developer from Macao, a tiny Portuguese enclave that glitters with gambling casinos and luxury hotels off China's southern coast, registered an import-export company in Little Rock in 1994. What is unusual is what happened only 10 days later: The company contributed $15,000 to the Democratic National Committee.
No one knows why the company's owner, Ng Lap Seng, developed such a sudden interest in U.S. politics, or how the firm managed to generate money to donate from its business in America - as federal law requires - in so short a time.
But there is at least one clue to Ng's political involvement: His main business partner in the United States is Charles Yah Lin Trie, a veteran Democratic fund-raiser, longtime Little Rock businessman and friend of Bill Clinton for 14 years.
Trie is neither as productive nor as well known as the man at the center of the party's difficulties over questionable donations, John Huang. But like his friend Huang, Trie and others in his circle illustrate the intertwining of private and political interests and White House connections that has provided grist for the controversy.
Trie, who owns a Little Rock-based international trading company, is one of several Clinton friends avidly seeking business in Asia. Their White House connections have clearly opened doors for them there. At the same time, their status at the White House has been enhanced by the political cash they have pulled in.
A member of the DNC's national finance board of directors, Trie solicited about $100,000 in donations in the past campaign, according to DNC officials. He and his relatives have given $141,500 to Democratic candidates since May 1994. One of his companies, Daihatsu International Trading Co. Inc., has contributed $70,000 since July 1994, records show.
Ng's is not the only unusual donation from someone associated with Trie's business. Keshi Zhan, a single mother in Arlington, Va., who works part time for Trie and Ng as a hostess, contributed $12,500 this year to attend a Clinton fund-raising dinner. That amounted to more than half of her yearly salary of $22,408 as an Arlington County records clerk.
Zhan said she donated her own money for a chance to meet the president at the event organized by Huang and Trie. She also said she had income from Trie and Ng.
The DNC has said it believes Zhan's donation was legitimate; DNC officials would not comment last week on Ng's donation. The party has returned nearly $1.5 million in donations, most of them solicited by Huang, largely because the funds came from foreign sources.
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Trie grew up in Taiwan in a poor military family that fled China in 1949. He came to the United States in the mid-1970s and worked as a busboy in Washington-area restaurants . He moved to Little Rock to learn the business from his older sister, and eventually bought several Chinese restaurants, including one frequented by then-Gov. Clinton.
Trie calls Clinton ``Lao Ke'' - or ``Old Clinton'' - using a Chinese term of familiarity, business associates said. He has made it clear that he regards his connection to Clinton as good for business. ``In China, people want to know you before they do business with you,'' Trie told a Little Rock newspaper reporter two years ago.
Clinton has publicly embraced him in front of Asian leaders. ``He [Trie] always said that `Lao Ke' really gave him a lot of face that way,'' one acquaintance recalled. In his travels to Taiwan, Trie has passed out business cards touting his membership on the DNC's finance board. His relationship with Clinton and fund-raising in the party also led to his appointment to a 17-member presidential commission on U.S.-Pacific trade and investment policy this year.
Trie, who did not return phone calls, now spends most of his time jetting around Asia, relatives and business associates said. A company biography of Trie lists offices in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Beijing and two other Chinese cities. The company bases its Washington office in a three-bedroom apartment at the Watergate.
In 1994, Trie and Ng bid on the renovation of a Little Rock hotel, but lost out to a Chicago company. Five months later, Ng incorporated the San Kin Yip International Trading Corp. in Little Rock to import textiles and other goods and export chemicals, machinery and advanced technology. On Oct. 21, 1994, 10 days after San Kin Yip was incorporated, the company made its $15,000 donation to the DNC. It listed the same address as Trie's Daihatsu International Trading Co.
Ng's company is now defunct; its business standing was revoked in January for failure to pay franchise taxes.
Although San Kin Yip of Little Rock seems to have disappeared, the San Kin Yip Group of Macao is an established commercial and residential development conglomerate. Ng, its chairman, is also on the board of a Macao development company headed by Stanley Ho, one of Asia's richest people and undisputed king of Macao's thriving gambling business.
Trie's business is supposed to broker deals between U.S. and Asian companies. Although he has said he represents more than 30 companies in the United States and Southeast Asia, relatives and business associates say they cannot point to any completed deals and that Ng is one of Trie's financial backers.
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Trie has not been alone in playing on his Clinton White House connections to promote personal business dealings. If anything, his friend, former presidential assistant Mark E. Middleton, is even more aggressive in using his White House ties.
After quitting a White House job in February 1995 to become a business consultant and international deal-maker, Middleton, then 33, embarked on a far-flung effort to cultivate Asian connections.
Trie introduced Middleton to business acquaintances and served as guide and interpreter on a trip to Taiwan and China in 1995.
It is ``possible'' that Trie paid for some of Middleton's hotel and restaurant bills in China, according to Middleton's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin. Luskin described Trie as a ``friend'' of his client but said Middleton never had a business relationship with him.
He said that Middleton may have taken Trie and Ng to lunch at the White House cafeteria as a favor. Middleton occasionally used a car belonging to Ng and Trie.
Luskin has said that Middleton did not do any fund-raising abroad, and that after Middleton quit the White House job in 1995 Middleton played only a ``minimal'' domestic fund-raising role and was ``not responsible for any substantial donations.''
Middleton did raise a reported $100,000 from two wealthy business clients for a private entity in Arkansas that wants to restore Clinton's boyhood home in Hope.
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