City Comptroller John Liu had to know that crooked cash was being funneled into his mayoral campaign through the illegal use of “straw donors,” a prosecutor insisted yesterday.
Manhattan US Attorney Justin Anderson told jurors that secret recordings by an undercover FBI agent prove that Liu fund-raiser Xing Wu “Oliver” Pan used “code words” to inform the Queens Democrat that $16,000 in contributions were actually made by the agent, who called himself “Richard Kong.”
“You know from the assurances that Mr. Pan gave ‘Richard’ . . . that it would defeat the whole purpose of the straw-donor scheme if the candidate doesn’t know where the money’s coming from,” Anderson told the jury.
“That’s the whole point of these people funneling large donations into the campaign. It’s to get credit for it,” Anderson said.
During a three-hour closing argument at the trial of Pan and former Liu campaign treasurer Jia “Jenny” Hou, Anderson said that Pan and FBI agent John Chiue, in his undercover role as “Kong,” discussed “in great detail” how Liu would learn that Chiue was providing all the dough collected during an August 2011 fund-raising event at a Chinatown restaurant.
“When I say it’s your event, John Liu knows what that means. He knows that it’s your money,” Anderson said, quoting from a transcript of a recording that Chiue made.
Anderson also noted that both men “joked” and “laughed about it” after Pan made the remarks.
As part of a long-running probe into Liu’s campaign finances, Chiue posed as “Kong,” a corrupt Texas businessman looking to buy political influence to help him open a Chinese chain restaurant in New York City.
During “Kong’s” fund-raising event, “Ms. Hou was in on it. She knew the code. She knew what it meant — that all the money came from ‘Richard,’ ” Anderson said.
He also said that Hou knew that an earlier, May 2011 fund-raising event was “completely riddled” with straw donations from businessmen seeking to curry favor with its host, Chinese-grocery magnate Jeffrey Wu.
Hou never reported Wu as an “intermediary” — or campaign bundler — with the city Campaign Finance Board, and tried to cover up his role in the event by reimbursing him for its cost after Pan’s arrest, Anderson said.
Anderson also said Hou obstructed justice by withholding dozens of e-mails subpoenaed by a grand jury, including three related to filing deadlines that showed “John Liu’s direct involvement.”
Pan and Hou are charged with scheming to use straw donations to cheat the city out of 6-to-1 campaign-matching funds, which Anderson said would have netted more in matching funds than then actual contributions collected at either event.
Liu hasn’t been charged in the case, and his lawyer, Paul Shechtman, called it a “sad day when a great office” — the Manhattan US Attorney’s Office — “thinks that rhetoric is a substitute for evidence.
“There is not a drop of evidence, and there hasn’t been for three years, that John Liu knew of any wrongdoing connected to his campaign,” Shechtman said.
Defense summations were set to begin this morning.