For Deals, Jefferson Built Web Of Firms

In the 1990s, Jefferson made a name for himself on Capitol Hill as an ardent promoter of Africa as a huge new market for trade and investment. In 2000, that caught the attention of Jackson, whose company, iGate Inc., sold technology to deliver high-speed Internet access over ordinary copper wires. Jefferson saw the technology as a way for poor West African countries to skip the huge investments needed to install fiber optic cables or wireless relay stations, court records show.

At first, Jefferson promoted iGate's technology without asking for anything in return. But in early 2001, according to court documents, he informed Jackson that his services would no longer be free. On Jan. 19 of that year, the Jefferson family started the ANJ Group, with Jefferson's wife, Andrea Green Jefferson, as manager, and his five daughters listed as company members.

On Rep. Jefferson's instructions, court records show, ANJ was to receive $7,500 a month in consulting fees from iGate, along with 5 percent of gross sales over $5 million a year, 5 percent of capital investments in iGate secured by Jefferson and 1 million shares of the company.

Between 2001 and 2005, iGate transferred $455,446 to ANJ, some of which covered Jefferson's travel costs to Africa, according to an FBI search warrant.

Jackson traveled to Africa with Jefferson, who met with officials to promote the deals, according to court documents. But there were tensions between the two.

"Jackson believed that in the event Jackson did not pay these invoices, [Jefferson] would stop performing official acts on behalf of iGate and take affirmative steps to impede the success of iGate," said a court document in Jackson's guilty plea.

The seed of Jefferson's current troubles was planted in 2004 when Netlink Digital Television abruptly backed out of a one-year-old agreement with iGate to provide access to Nigeria's cable television and Internet market. That breach sent Jefferson and Jackson scrambling for new investors, court records show. They found Lori Mody.

Mody, 42, had co-founded the information technology company Signal Corp. with her late father, Win Remley, out of their house in McLean and built it up with defense contracts. In 2002, Veridian Corp. bought it for a reported $227 million.

Mody hired Pfeffer, a gregarious friend and former Jefferson staffer, in 2003 to help her invest in start-up companies and charitable ventures. When Pfeffer told Jefferson of Mody's investment interests, the congressman jumped, according to court records. In June 2004, Pfeffer introduced Jefferson to Mody over lunch in New Orleans.

Jefferson spelled out iGate's potential in Africa as "a deal you can't refuse," according to an FBI search warrant. Mody's company agreed to invest $45 million for the right to use iGate's technology and equipment in Nigeria, with $3.5 million paid up front.

That August, Jefferson, with the help of one of his daughters, a lawyer, established W2-International Broadband Services Ltd., (W2-IBBS) under Mody's ownership, to partner with a Nigerian telecommunications firm, Rosecom.

Mody then transferred $3.5 million to iGate with the understanding that those funds would be forwarded to Netlink Digital Television to buy back the rights to iGate's technology. FBI documents say only half that money reached the television company.

Four months later, over lunch in a congressional dining room, Jefferson informed Mody that he wanted a 5 percent to 7 percent stake in W2-IBBS in the name of his five daughters. That stake would be channeled through their own African company, Global Energy & Environmental Services LLC, which would be run by his son-in-law, according to court documents.

Over the ensuing months, Mody increasingly questioned Pfeffer and Jackson about the deal and her $3.5 million. In March 2005, she went to the FBI. From then on, Jefferson's ever-more-complex business dealings unfolded under the watch of federal investigators.

On May 12, 2005, Jefferson demanded that his stake in the Nigerian deal rise from 7 percent to as much as 20 percent, "for my children," according to court documents. The figure eventually reached 30 percent.

On July 12, after a trip to Ghana, Jefferson met with Mody to inform her she now owned a company there, International Broad Band Services, which, like W2-IBBS, would be partially owned by the Jefferson family, according to the search warrant.

On July 26, Jefferson and Mody met to discuss Jefferson's formation of a new company, Multimedia Broadband Services Inc., to buy out iGate's role in the African venture and relegate Jackson to an employee of his own operation, court records show.

On July 30, Mody met Jefferson at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City to deliver a briefcase containing $100,000 in FBI-marked bills, allegedly to be used to bribe Nigerian officials, records show.

On Aug. 3, 2005, the FBI raided Jefferson's residence and found $90,000 of those bills in a freezer. Agents also found a document detailing still more corporate entities: Diverse Communications, which was to receive a percentage of Nigerian operating profits plus $5 per television set using iGate technology; and Jefferson Interests Inc., operated by Jefferson and his brothers, whose bank account was listed as a destination for Nigerian cash.