Front Burner - Fugees star Pras snared in bizarre criminal conspiracy web

Episode Date: May 2, 2023

Pras Michel, the rapper known for being one third of the famed ‘90s-era group, the Fugees, has been convicted of 10 criminal counts connected to a web of international political influence, conspiracy, and embezzlement. As Front Burner guest Michael Ames wrote for Rolling Stone magazine, the wild story of includes former U.S. president Barack Obama, actor Leonardo DiCaprio, and a wealthy Malaysian fugitive. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Happy Holidays! I'm Frank Cappadocia, Dean of Continuous Professional Learning at Humber Polytechnic, and I'd like you to set a goal for 2025 to sharpen your skills and get promoted. Register for a professional designation, micro-credential, or certificate with Humber's Continuous Professional Learning and ignite your career journey this new year. Our experts deliver accelerated learning from resilience-based leadership to electric vehicle fundamentals in learning options that work with your ambitious lifestyle. Adapt, evolve, and excel. Go to humber.ca slash cpl to get started. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Alex Panetta.

You might want to buckle up, because we are about to take a wild ride on a story with improbable twists and turns. It's about Grammy-winning rapper Praz Michelle from the Fugees, who was convicted last week of political conspiracy, witness tampering, and failing to register as an agent of a foreign government, China. tampering, and failing to register as an agent of a foreign government, China. The story involves a multi-billion dollar embezzlement scheme, and campaign finance fraud, and mysterious contacts with the Chinese government. We'll have cameo appearances from Barack Obama, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Marlon Brando's missing Oscar statue. It even offers a potential lesson for Canada. I've got the journalist Michael Ames with me. He interviewed Pras Michelle extensively for Rolling Stone magazine, and he's going to explain why the former Fuji now faces a maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison.

Hi, Michael. Hi, how are you? Well, thank you. So this surreal saga starts with two men at a nightclub in 2006. A promoter asks Prakasrel Michel, a.k.a. Praz, to come hang out with a young Malaysian man he calls a whale, a high roller. Praz reluctantly agrees, and he sees this whale spent massive amounts of money at this club. What happened? Sure. Yeah, it's quite a memorable way to meet someone who will figure large in his life.

So Praz gets to this club, and he sees what I guess people are accustomed to seeing in new york city nightclub at late night which was a bunch of young wall street bros getting getting hammered and um these wall street guys were also paying money to sort of control the the party that night the club they were paying money to use the microphone and get up there and announce things so you know they slip them see some cash they go up there and they say we're the richest people in the club so we're gonna buy everybody a drink and everybody's you know screaming and shouting and and praz tells me that he notices that this moment doesn't sit very well with this young asian fellow wearing glasses and he seems kind of quiet and mellow and all of a sudden he says he wants the mic and the promoter says,

well, you got to pay a bunch of money. It's not really our, our, our thing. And he said, well, I'll pay the money.

And he gives the hands over $20,000 cash and he gets on the microphone. And he says, I hear there's people in this club who think they're the richest people in the club and they're going to buy everyone a drink. Well, I'll tell you what, I'll buy everyone in this club who think they're the richest people in the club and they're going to buy everyone a drink well i'll tell you what i'll buy everyone in this club a bottle this is when bottles cost thousands of dollars so you know wow the crowd goes wild and and the wall street guys get back on they say well we'll buy everybody two bottles and then jolo get slips him another twenty thousand dollars and he gets on and he has his final say on the matter. He says, you know, I'm not into this back and forth nonsense.

So I'll tell you what, I want to buy every bottle in this club. If there's a, if there's a, I want every liquor bottle, every beer bottle, every juice bottle, every water bottle. If there's a bottle with liquid in it, I'm going to buy it. And, and I'll tell you what, I want to send someone over to cross the street, the club there. And I'm going to buy every bottle in that club too.

Amazing. So this man, Jolo had worked on some big business deals in Malaysia. And more recently he was involved in creating something called the one MDB fund stands for one Malaysia development. There had, it's a sovereign wealth fund, He was involved in creating something called the 1MDB Fund, stands for One Malaysia Development Berhad. It's a sovereign wealth fund, a fund Malaysia's government could use to invest and grow the nation's money.

But Lo used this fund to make himself very, very rich. So what happened? Because he was the architect in many ways of that fund, he knew how to get in the back door. He knew how to move money around, and he just simply started embezzling it. Now, I say it's simple now, but it wasn't that simple. It was complicated, and he found some loopholes in the international banking system, and he found ways. I mean, he was a smart guy, and he went to one of the best business schools in the United

States, the Wharton School of Business, the same business school that our former president Trump graduated from. And I guess if your question was, what did he start doing with that money? He started spending it obscenely or extravagantly, and he's obsessed with celebrities and being surrounded by celebrities. So he starts paying celebrities to go out with him. It was reported in the book about him that came out in 2018, Billion Dollar Whale, by the former Wall Street Journal reporters, that he would pay Paris Hilton $100,000 just to go out with him for a night. That's hot. And when you got $800 million in the bank, it's not that big a deal, I suppose.

You called his scheme one of the biggest embezzlement schemes in the history of money. I mean, how big are we talking? Well, so he ended up siphoning four and a half billion dollars out of the fund. And when the Justice Department eventually cracked down on him, they seized a billion dollars of his assets where he was parking the money in kind of a long-term laundering scheme. Meantime, Pryce has gone from being a Grammy winner to a serious documentary filmmaker, and he's interested in politics. He volunteers for Barack Obama's first presidential campaign. He starts getting invited to fancy fundraisers. It's around Obama's re-election campaign in 2012 when Lowe re-enters the picture. He learns about Praz's connection to Obama.

What does he ask the rapper to do? They had interacted once, I think in about 2008 after when Obama was running, and he remembered that Praz was a real big supporter and had started being a surrogate. So in 2012, with another election on the horizon, Jho Low starts making inroads to see if he can work his way in to get closer to the White House. And bear in mind, he had done this in Malaysia. He was very close with the prime minister who had pulled into his corruption scheme. He had done it with officials in the UAE. So he knew the playbook here and he thought, well, if I can do it in those countries, why can't I do it in America? So he finds out through Praz that these fundraisers are going on. They're $40,000 head. He wires money to accounts connected to Praz.

And Praz, at the meantime, is being recruited and sort of mentored by a very powerful and well-connected Democratic Party fundraiser named Frank White Jr. Frank White Jr. is related to Michelle Obama through marriage. Michelle Obama through marriage. And he was a top fundraiser for the Clintons and also for Barack Obama in 2008. And by 2012, Frank White Jr. is the vice chair of fundraising for the Obama campaign. So Frank White Jr. is sort of helping Praz climb the ladder of fundraisers for Obama and grow his career as a political fundraiser as well. Jolo wires money to these accounts controlled by Praz. Frank White tells Praz, I need help getting more people to these fundraisers. Can you help me? Praz says, sure thing. He starts

inviting his friends. But when you invite a friend to a $40,000 a head fundraiser and the friends say, well, I don't have that kind of loose money, Prowse says, don't worry, I've got you covered. Well, this was in 2012, and Prowse, looking back on it, says he didn't realize that he was about to start violating Federal Election Commission, FEC, guidelines and laws that govern American elections. You cannot take foreign money and bring it into a campaign. You cannot front money for other people and have those people claim that it's their own. We here in America are pretty jaded by political spending at this point. And I will tell you, I imagine that this goes on to some degree you know but this was done rather brazenly and they got caught yeah so it might be legal to buy everyone a bottle in a new york city nightclub but it's not legal to buy everyone's political donations okay so that's right do we know do we know why low wanted to get so close to obama what's i mean other than just than just enjoying the company of celebrities,

was there an actual plan here? We don't know if there was an actual plan, but I think we can look back on it all and see that he wanted to show his benefactors in Malaysia that he was getting close to the US government. Whether or not he thought he was going to be able to buy off Barack Obama, who knows, that would be a little bit far-fetched. But Frank White Jr. was quite close to Barack Obama, and Jolo started making real efforts and succeeded in getting Frank White Jr. pretty fabulously wealthy through his own loose cash. Yeah, so Frank White is married. You mentioned the connection to Michelle Obama.

His sister is married to Michelle Obama's cousin. And there's a party in Las Vegas at one point. Can you talk to me about what happens at Lowe's hotel room and what prize in white tell Lowe it's going to take to get some prized objective of Lowe's? really at his height of his powers and his influence. He went from a guy who would pay celebrities money to hang out with him to a guy that celebrities wanted to hang out with because he was investing in projects. He had bought himself a stake in Sony Music and a seat on the board.

He had funded Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese's film, The Wolf of Wall Street. This was all done legitimately, bear in mind. No one knew that his money was illegally amassed. He appeared to be and actually passed vetting by Leonardo DiCaprio and the studio as a legitimate Malaysian businessman. So at this moment, he throws himself this epic, over-the-top,

never-seen-anything-like-it-before birthday party in Las Vegas. He builds a gigantic tent out in the desert. There's the Hollywood actors. There's New York bankers. It's a real who's who of American society. And at this point, Jolo is approached by Praz and Frank White and says, hey, we want to talk about that favor you had asked. Now, the favor, if you're listeners, is that Jolo said he wanted a photo with Barack Obama. Jolo says, then let's talk about it after the party. I'm having an after party in my hotel suite. white go to the hotel suite as directed later that night they walk in and they try to talk to jolo there it was a little loud in the suite he couldn't really hear each other because somebody had driven a ferrari into the suite and was revving the engine so they say let's go out on the balcony and talk there where it's quiet so they go out on the balcony and they sit down jolo flanked on either side by pros mich, Michelle from the Fugees, and Frank White, the powerful Obama fundraiser. And Praz says to Jolo, you know, we know you want

this photo, Joe, but it's almost impossible to make that sort of thing happen. It's not likely. It's not in the cards. But $20 million, that might change your odds. That might improve things for you. And Jolo looks at him and says, okay, no problem. And sure enough, at the end of the month, after Obama was reelected, there's a White House holiday party and Frank White follows through on his part of the deal.

He whisks Jolo through security checkpoints. He's not invited. he's not on the list but frank white gets him in sticks him in line with everybody waiting to have their photo taken with with barack and michelle obama jolo gets his photo taken and long story short once jolo gets the photo frank white gets his 20 million dollars incredible and if i understand correctly he actually tells prize i would have this is chump change basically i would have paid a heck of a lot more for this picture with obama yeah he eventually gets it and he says to prize i would have given you i would have paid

100 million dollars for this photo okay someone who re-likes barack obama yeah so yeah well and someone who needed clearly to have proof to show people back in Malaysia and perhaps even at this point already China, and this is a part we don't know, but hopefully we'll figure out over time, that he had connections to the U.S. government. Happy holidays. I'm Frank Cappadocia, Dean of Continuous Professional Learning at Humber Polytechnic. And I'd like you to set a goal for 2025 to sharpen your skills and get promoted. Register for a professional designation,

micro-credential, or certificate with Humber's Continuous Professional Learning and ignite your career journey this new year. Our experts deliver accelerated learning from resilience-based leadership to electric vehicle fundamentals. Thank you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples. I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Here comes the plot twist, right?

Near the end of Obama's presidency, the U.S. government seizes about a billion dollars worth of Lowe's assets over corruption in the 1MDB fund. And you write that even Leonardo DiCaprio is forced to surrender some gifts from Lowe, like a Picasso painting and Marlon Brando's missing Oscar from On the Waterfront. You don't understand. I could have had class. I could have been a contender. I could have been somebody. And with U.S. authorities on his trail, Lowe next tries to get in with Donald Trump's administration. So who does Lowe recruit to try lobbying the new administration? Well, I think he sees the beginning of the Trump administration, that the things are a little chaotic. And he says, aha, this looks like an opportunity. So he reaches out to his old politically connected American friend, Praz Michelle.

And Praz says, well, I don't know anyone in the Trump administration, but let me see if I can help you. And at this point, it's worth, I think, reminding listeners that there's no illegality that's really sort of known about by Praz at this point, right? Yes, the US government has cracked down on Jolo and has seized his assets, but Jolo says, well, this is just a legal problem. It's a misunderstanding, and I need someone to help me out i need i need lawyers i need representation so praz starts trying to help him find american lawyers and representation who are close to the trump administration he connects him to rudy giuliani jolo tells people that he gave rudy giuliani a retainer fee i believe it was eight or ten million dollars giuliani denies that

um he gives uh he eventually does hire, legitimately hires former New Jersey governor and presidential candidate, Chris Christie, another Republican who at the time was close to Trump. And Chris Christie is legally retained ultimately and ends up taking $15 million in a settlement between the Department of Justice that they ended up setting aside for the legal representation for JOLO. To further the sort of extra-legal schemes, he says to Prowse, can you help me get some more people who can help me with this and who can help getting even closer with Trump and shut down these investigations? So P so pros reaches out to an old friend a woman named nikki lung davis who was a republican donor and she in turn reaches out to one of her republican tongue contacts a man named

elliot broidy and the three of them sort of form the core of this i i call it in the story this kind of wacky zany crew it feels like a a, you know, like a bad rat pack reboot. Meanwhile, he's cozying up to China, right? And here's where things get even weirder because when some of the American lobbyists go meet Lo in mainland China, he's accompanied by a high ranking Chinese official. And what does that Chinese official want? And what does that Chinese official want? They find Jolo accompanied by a man named Sun Lejun, the vice minister of public security for the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party. And Lejun now has something that he needs.

So now they're not getting requests just from Jolo, but they're getting requests from this Chinese minister. The Chinese minister, he needs a Chinese fugitive returned to China, a man by the name of Guo Wenji. Guo Wenji is currently in prison in New York after he was arrested just at the start of the trial. And we do not have enough time to cover his entire story. But in 2017, he was simply known as a fugitive criminal from the chinese government and someone that the chinese government was desperate to get back supposedly a dissident who may have been a double agent friends with steve manning right exactly well said and so they want him back and who among the americans agreed to push for this chinese billionaire guo's uh release back to china pretty much everyone who who who who they could contact and they were very clever about who they contacted so elliot broidy um is

doing it for uh as part of his contractual agreement with jolo for for the you know 50 million dollars if he does it by this date 75 million dollars 75 million if he does it even sooner bear in mind he also got eight million dollars at the outset and one million dollars just to show up to the meeting so elliot brody is is working on it mickey lund davis that original crew um pros was sort of a connector here he he He helped Jolo find these people. And then probably the most successful person they then connected to through Elliot Brody went to Steve Wynn. Steve Wynn, the owner of casinos all around the world. And it was very good timing to get Steve Wynn on this project because Steve Wynn was awaiting licensing for two of his casinos being built in Macau, which is a Chinese protectorate at the time. And Steve Wynn ends up having several meetings and phone calls over a period of months, and he really starts carrying the ball on this. He takes a docket of papers to President Trump, shows him how bad a guy Guowo Wen-ji is, why they need to send him home. He's an accused rapist.

He's accused of bribery. He's a bad hombre, as Trump might call him, and they've got to get him out. Because all of this is being done through non-official channels, it doesn't go anywhere. Well, this all comes to a head in a very, very bizarre meeting in New York

City, which starts with a walk around the Four Seasons Hotel. Can you describe that unusual scene for me? Krause gets a call to show up at the Four Seasons and that there'll be a note for him at the front desk. So he walks up to the front desk, opens this little envelope, and the note says that he needs to walk around the block twice and make sure no one is following him.

So he does this, and it's in the middle of Manhattan. He knows the area, comes back in, gets another card. It says, go up to this room on a high floor. Praz does this, goes to this room. He's looking out at the city. He's sitting there wondering what's going to happen. He told me later, he was quite worried at this point that his physical safety was at risk. He didn't know what was about to happen to him. And eventually, after about half an hour, two Chinese men in suits come to the door. They take his phones and they lead him to the Pem House suite where he finds that same minister, Sun Lejun. And a meeting ensues that is truly bizarre and this incredible scene from Praz's life and from this case. Well, they argued about a cigarette. Well, first they argued about a cigarette, which was Praz's life and from this case. Well, they argued about a cigarette.

Well, first they argue about a cigarette, which is Praz ate cigarettes, and Sun Lejeune wants to smoke a cigarette, and Praz gets up and says, oh, no, I can't be near the cigarette. And Sun Lejeune shoots him this dirty look and says, who is this guy? Who is this wimpy American I have to deal with?

And Praz told it in more colorful language that I'll save, not radio friendly. And they sit down and Sun Lejun has a little temper tantrum and says, I can't get these meetings. And who the hell does the American government think they are? They won't meet with me. And so I've got a problem. Let me tell you my problem. The problem is we need this man Guo Wenzhi back in China, and I've got plenty to offer the US government in return, including chief among them, three detained Americans being

held in Chinese prisons. One of whom is a pregnant woman nearing in her third trimester. And I can't even get Jeff Sessions to respond to me despite making this offer. What should I do? What would you do if you were me, the vice minister of domestic security for the People's Republic of China asks Praz from the Fugees? And Praz looks at him and says, well, this is a little above my pay grade, but if I were you and you're asking me, what would I do if I were you i would send this woman home you just told me she's a pregnant woman nearing the end of her pregnancy send her home man

well that's all that's all the minister needed to hear he pulls out his phone puts it on speaker phone makes a call speaking mandarin turns to pros and says when do you want her back and pros says i don't know tomorrow the? And Praz says, I don't know, tomorrow? And the conversation goes on. He says, well, it's Friday, so we can't get her out tomorrow, but we'll send her back on Monday or Tuesday at the latest. Okay. Hangs up the phone. Praz says, just out of curiosity, who was that you were speaking to who could make something like that happen that fast?

And the minister says, Xi. And it was the president. He said, he's the only person I speak to. So it was a phone call with Xi Jinping. Just to underscore how crazy this is, as you said, this is Praz from the Fugees brokering the release of detainees negotiating with the president of China through an intermediary in the security state. Yeah. And I think something that has not been discussed enough from this and that the jury certainly didn't get to hear is that, and he did it successfully. And the government can say, oh, he was just doing it for money or he was just there for the money. Well, maybe, but regardless, at that moment when the stakes were high and he was worried about his own welfare, he hears about an American woman who's pregnant and he successfully negotiates her release and she comes home and the U.S. government has no idea how it even happened.

And so there's one last moment of spy fiction in Praz's arrest in 2019. He's walking down the street in November. So what does he see and what is he charged with? What happens there? So this is about two years later. At this point, the federal government is all over this case. They're investigating him for the money. They're investigating his relationship with Jolo.

So here we are in November 2019. He walks out of his apartment in New York City in Soho, doesn't notice anything unusual. The street's filled with the normal type of people he'd see on his street. There's a guy with the phone company. He's working on some fiber optic cables. There's some people window shopping in front of the Versace store. There's a construction worker with a jackhammer. And he gets about 15 feet outside his door. And all of a sudden, everything stops and goes in slow motion as he sees someone point to him. All these people on the street turn and look at him and start walking towards him. And then a tall man comes out of a car on the other side of the street, introduces himself as the FBI agent.

All of these people are not what they seem to be. They were undercover government agents. They surround him, and the FBI lead agent explains they've got a warrant for his phones. He needs to hand over his phones. And he was charged with a series of crimes, right? And what are these crimes, and why is he getting charged, and no one else appears to have been in trouble over this case despite the fact that so many other people are are involved there was already an earlier indictment for the fec charges against him um at that point but then another year and a half goes by and in 2021 a much larger uh indictment

known as the superseding indictment comes down and it's, and it is just compounded everything. And they, it's not just the FEC anymore. Now he's being charged as an unregistered foreign, a foreign agent of the Chinese government and of using foreign money to influence American politics. And it's serious. And there are, you know, it's more than 20 years in prison. Um prison if he's found guilty of all these things. To answer your question, a lot of the other people involved were charged, but they ended up making plea deals or negotiating, or they were offered immunity deals with the government. In other words, if they cooperated in the government's investigation against Praz and agreed to testify against him, then they would not be punished themselves. In this case, the more powerful person at the top is Jolo. And the US government has no way to get to him because he's living as a fugitive in China. But the one person they could

get to and the one person that they saw that they could indict and put on trial was Praz. And because he didn't take the plea, because he didn't plead guilty, because he didn't believe he had done anything wrong, because he believed that he had a right to a trial, they said, oh, you want a trial? All right, well, here it comes. And they threw the book at him. And the trial ended, as we all know, with these guilty verdicts. So here's where I want to sound the maple alert. We have a Canadian angle here, and I'd like to focus on these charges under FARA, the Foreign Agents Registration Act. It requires people to put their name on a registry if they're lobbying on behalf of a foreign government. And this is a really hot topic in Canada

because there are controversies about Chinese interference in our elections with so-called Chinese police stations. So Canada's government is considering creating a foreign agent registry. You've been critical, Afara, of the way the foreign agent registry was used here in the United States against pros. Why is that? Well, it's a somewhat broad and vague law that can be utilized in a discretionary manner by prosecutors. And I think that's part of the problem. And in this case, I think you can just see how it was applied differently to different people

involved so steve winn for his actions well he got a bunch of notices alerting him that he probably that he needed to register for farah but he never did so the government said all right you're not going to register we're going to come after you but they didn't come after him with a criminal suit uh or indictment the way they did with Pross. With Steve Wynn, they just did a civil suit. Then Elliot Broidy was another man I mentioned who was involved. He pled guilty and then was very soon afterwards pardoned fully by President Trump. So this, and you can see why and the decisions that led to it.

But I think when you zoom out and consider what kind of law FARA is, how it comes down to the discretion of law enforcement and prosecutors, that it is not necessarily, in my opinion, equally applied here. Yeah. And I'd love to know what Pryor says about this. I mean, you've interviewed him. What does he say about why, at the end of the day, why he got involved in all this? And what's his reaction? Well, I think he was shocked because it's quite a tall claim that the Justice Department is making. You're basically saying, proudest from the Fugees, this man with no history in politics is the greatest agent of Chinese subterfuge in US politics in history. There's no precedent for this.

There's been a lot of shock and surprise, and I think Praz is still digesting it. There's not much he can say at the moment about his motivations at each step of the way, because his lawyers will take this on appeal and they'll go to the appellate court. And so Prowse still needs to be kind of careful what he says to people like me. But I can tell you that all along he has maintained that he didn't know about Farah. No of these other people involved told him about Farah. If he had simply registered and known that he needed to register, he would have registered. If registering some four pages of paperwork or 10 pages of paperwork would have allowed him to say, okay, fine, I'm a lobbyist for the Chinese government and avoid all of these things that have happened to him. He tells me he simply would have done it. He would have registered. simply would have done it. He would have registered. And so now there's an appeal, probably, and there's always a chance this wild story could take yet another twist. So thanks so much for walking us through it, Michael. Really appreciate it. Absolutely. It was a real pleasure,

and thank you for having me on. That's all for today. I'm Alex Panetta, and thank you for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.