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By Roberto Suro Hsia's attorney, Nancy Luque, said Hsia is innocent of any wrongdoing and portrayed the new indictment as part of a long-standing effort by federal prosecutors to pressure her into pleading guilty to campaign fund-raising misdeeds. "She will not plead guilty to crimes she did not commit," Luque said. Hsia, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in Taiwan, has pleaded not guilty to a six-count federal indictment that charges that from 1993 to 1996 she illegally routed funds from a Buddhist temple in California to support the Democratic Party and several Democratic campaigns. That trial is scheduled to start Aug. 31. Hsia is best known for escorting Vice President Al Gore to a controversial 1996 campaign event at the temple, which was cited as an unindicted co-conspirator in the February indictment. According to yesterday's indictment, Hsia illegally failed to file a 1994 income tax return, underreported income on her 1995 and 1996 tax returns and filed a false 1995 corporate tax return for her immigration consulting company, Hsia & Associates Inc., which is based in the Los Angeles suburb of Arcadia. If found guilty on the criminal tax charges, Hsia would face a maximum of 10 years in jail and a fine of $850,000. "This is a squeeze play," Luque said of the tax charges. "They are trying to force her to plead guilty" on the campaign finance charges. Officials close to the Justice Department's investigation of 1996 fund-raising have suggested that Hsia would be a valuable witness if she would agree to plead guilty and then cooperate with the government, and Luque insisted yesterday that the tax charges were only brought to increase their leverage in that probe. Although both cases were brought by the Justice Department's campaign finance task force, the tax charges were handed down yesterday by a grand jury in Los Angeles and the campaign finance charges are pending before a U.S. District Court in Washington. "The timing of the charges is such that they are forcing her to contest two separate cases in courts 3,000 miles apart," Luque said. "It is obviously an effort to pressure her." Hsia is considered an important figure in the campaign finance investigation because of her long association with James Riady, a prominent Indonesian banker and friend of President Clinton, and John Huang, a former employee of Riady's firm, the Lippo Group, who was appointed to top jobs at the Commerce Department and the Democratic National Committee. Hsia first worked with Riady and Huang on lobbying and fund-raising projects in 1988. Huang helped orchestrate Gore's appearance on April 29, 1996, at the Hsi Lai Temple, which is formally known as the International Buddhist Progress Society. Gore has insisted that he had no reason to believe it was a fund-raising event. Hsia and unnamed temple personnel were charged in the February indictment with soliciting $55,000 for the DNC the day after the event. All of the contributors were later allegedly reimbursed with temple funds. At the time of the indictment, Gore said, "it had nothing to do with me."
© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
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Democratic fund-raiser Maria Hsia (left) and her attorney in February. (Ray Lustig – The Washington Post) 