Former Fugees rapper Pras has become the latest American celebrity to find himself tangled up in a massive Malaysian embezzlement scandal.
Prakazrel ‘Pras’ Michel, a founding member of the hit 1990s group, is now fighting the US government over a $38 million civil forfeiture complaint.
The complaint says Michel was engaged by the brother of Jho Low, a fugitive Malaysian financer charged by the Justice Department last year with embezzling money from the fund to pay for a luxurious lifestyle, to join the illicit lobbying effort. It says Michel helped by opening bank accounts under false pretenses to finance the scheme. Justice Department officials are trying to recover roughly $38 million from Michel that they say can be connected to that effort.
With so much money flowing around him, celebrities were quickly drawn into Low’s world. Even the likes of DiCaprio couldn’t resist Low and his $400 million promise to help finance The Wolf of Wall Street.
The complaint claims Michel was looped into a Malaysian embezzlement
scandal by the brother of Jho Low, a fugitive Malaysian financier who once
partied with the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio (pictured together in 2013)
But everything about Low’s life changed when he was accused of draining billions of dollars from 1MDB.
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak purportedly set up 1MDB to support Malaysia’s economic development.
But authorities believe Razak, with the help of his Hollywood movie producer stepson Riza Aziz as well as Low, embezzled billions of dollars from the fund.
Michel allegedly opened bank accounts under false pretenses to help finance a lobbying campaign that unsuccessfully tried to shut down the investigation into 1MDB.
Michel, who shot to fame in the 1990s as a founding member of the Fugees with Lauryn Hill
and Wyclef Jean (all pictured together), allegedly opened bank accounts to help finance a lobbying campaign
that unsuccessfully tried to shut down the investigation into 1MDB
George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department official, pleaded guilty in November for his role in the lobbying effort, admitting he helped transfer tens of millions of dollars into the US to finance the campaign.
Prosecutors say Higginbotham, who worked on the congressional affairs staff in the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs, helped open bank accounts and created false loan documents for shell companies as part of the scheme.
It was the first public acknowledgement of a secret attempt to pressure American officials to drop their probe of the fund.
Prosecutors claim that Michel and Higginbotham worked together to open the accounts at US banks, and that Michel also distributed money to those involved in the campaign.
Justice Department officials are now trying to recover roughly $38million from Michel that they say can be connected to that effort.
Michel has denied wrongdoing. He told The Washington Post in a statement last month that his name was being “dragged through the mud” and said, “I have never conspired to commit any crime, nor defraud any organization, in this case or otherwise.”
(Excerpts) Read More at: USAToday.com and DailyMail.co.uk