An officer at a humanitarian organization was charged with money laundering in a UN bribery case that has ensnared two diplomats and a billionaire Chinese real-estate mogul, according to court papers unsealed on Friday.
Julia Vivi Wang (王薇), also known as Vivian Wang, is accused of paying US$500,000 in exchange for diplomatic positions for her late husband and another businessman and laundering the money through the sustainable development organization where she was an officer.
Prosecutors say the bribe was solicited by John Ashe, a former UN General Assembly president and UN ambassador from Antigua and Barbuda, and Francis Lorenzo, deputy ambassador for the Dominican Republic.
Wang made an initial court appearance at federal court in Manhattan on Friday afternoon. Messages left for her attorneys and a call to her nonprofit organization were not immediately returned.
Federal officials said Wang worked at one nonprofit and then created a second that aimed to fund economic development in developing countries.
She used bank accounts from the second organization to launder money from China through the US to an account in Trinidad, authorities said.
According to court papers, Wang and her husband wanted an official diplomatic position, because “they believed that such a position would permit them to make money.”
After her husband died, she used the development fund to transfer US$200,000 to a California company to pay for her husband’s cemetery plot, authorities said.
Lorenzo, who on Wednesday pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate against the other officials charged in the case, helped facilitate, according to court papers.
Federal prosecutors have said Ashe turned the world body into a “platform for profit” by accepting more than US$1 million in bribes from real-estate mogul Ng Lap Seng (吳立勝) and other businesspeople to pave the way for lucrative investments.
Some of the bribes were paid to gain Ashe’s support for the construction of a UN-sponsored conference center that Ng hoped to build in his hometown of Macau, prosecutors said.
Ashe and Ng have each pleaded not guilty and are free on bail. Ng is under 24-hour security, confined to a Manhattan apartment.
Ashe served in the largely ceremonial post as head of the 193-nation assembly from September 2013 to September 2014.
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