Mochtar Riady

Raising questions about the legality of an immigrant couple's $320,000 in donations to the Democratic Party, federal election officials said Thursday that it is unclear whether noncitizens legally can make contributions when they do not live in this country. The uncertainty presents the Democrats with a troublesome new issue. The party already has returned one large illegal contribution from a foreign corporation and has come under attack for other donations tied to foreign interests.

Officials of President Clinton's legal defense fund said Monday that they returned or rejected more than $600,000 in donations this year because of "significant concerns" about the sources of the money, delivered by a friend of the president from Little Rock, Ark. Some of the checks, turned in at different times by Charles Yah Lin "Charlie" Trie, seemed to have identical handwriting, fund officials said Monday.

It made sense when USC asked Indonesian billionaire Mochtar Riady to become the first Asian member of its board of trustees in 1994, joining filmmaker Steven Spielberg and retired Hughes Aircraft chief Malcolm Currie. After all, Riady, now 67, was a powerful symbol of Asian entrepreneurship, a former bicycle shop owner who controlled a multibillion-dollar empire stretching from Jakarta to Hong Kong to downtown Los Angeles.

Breaking their long silence in the scandal over foreign donations to American political campaigns, an Indonesian couple who gave $450,000 to the Democratic Party have told Senate investigators that the funds came from a wealthy relative in Jakarta. Their detailed account contradicts previous explanations by Democratic officials and raises new questions about the legality of the party's largest individual contributions during the last election cycle.

In John Huang's strange odyssey into the heart of the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party, few things remain so shrouded in intrigue as the handling of his coveted security clearances and his access to U.S. government secrets. The former Commerce Department official and Democratic fund-raiser has played a leading role in the campaign finance controversy since it erupted last fall.

It was a signal occasion, a milestone in the struggle of Asian immigrants to find their place in the American firmament. With the acuity of hindsight, it's clear the elements of the eventual scandal were there too, wanting only more time to reach critical mass and explode.

Indonesian financier James Riady, a central figure in the controversy over campaign donations supporting President Clinton's reelection, sought direct business benefits from earlier fund-raising alliances with U.S. senators, according to documents obtained by The Times. A memo by Riady in April 1988 outlined a plan to press senators to urge Taiwan to ease its banking rules and allow Asian American banks, "or at least [the Riady-owned] Bank of Trade," to open a branch office there.