NEW YORK, April 12 -- Al Sharpton said Tuesday that he complied with campaign finance laws while he was a presidential candidate, despite reports that federal authorities had opened a criminal investigation of his fundraising.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, citing unidentified sources, reported Monday that the FBI in New York had begun investigating Sharpton's fundraising as a spinoff of an unrelated criminal probe involving city officials and business executives in Philadelphia. It did not specify the exact nature of the Sharpton probe, the existence of which was first reported in the Philadelphia Daily News on April 5.
"Nobody has come to me to ask about this report of funds, and this is almost two years later," Sharpton told the Associated Press. The FBI declined to comment.
During the Philadelphia corruption investigation, local Democratic fundraiser Ronald A. White and Detroit businessman La-Van Hawkins reportedly were wiretapped having a conversation in which Hawkins expressed suspicions that Sharpton had failed to report money they had raised for his campaign. Sharpton's campaign reports, however, do list many checks collected by the pair, and Sharpton told the AP that "everything given was reported."
According to the wiretaps, White and Hawkins were planning to raise enough in contributions for Sharpton to help him qualify for federal matching funds.
"The idea of getting matching funds is to show that you are raising money. It would have been a contradiction not to report the money," Sharpton said.
Prosecutors have said Hawkins and White hoped Sharpton would introduce them to the man who controlled New York City's pension fund, in the hopes that the fund would invest in one of their business ventures. Sharpton set up the meeting, but the pension fund did not invest in the venture.
"They asked me to introduce them to several business officials," he said in a telephone interview. "Networking is what leaders do; there is no crime to do that. The FBI found there is no wrongdoing in that."
Hawkins is on trial in Philadelphia on charges of helping White to funnel a $10,000 payment to Philadelphia's ex-treasurer in an attempt to influence government contracts. White was indicted and died last November awaiting trial.
Questions about finances have recurred throughout Sharpton's career as an activist, and he has been cited by federal regulators in the past for mistakes in campaign reporting.
