Preet Bharara indicts Dinesh D’Souza for campaign finance fraud Chidanand Rajghatta,TNN | Jan 25, 2014, 04.40 AM IST WASHINGTON: Hes a high-profile Indian-American government attorney, of Democratic persuasion, whose campaign against political corruption and diplomatic malfeasance has put him on the front pages of newspapers in the US and India. His latest quarry is an equally high-profile Indian-American ultraconservative, of Republican hue, whose moral crusade against liberals and leftists has made him a darling of the extreme right. Neither of them trumpet their Indian-origin, but Preet Bharara and Dinesh DSouza, representing two streams of first generation immigrant political activism, will come face-to-face in a Manhattan federal court on Friday when the feared US Attorney moves to indict the infamous policy wonk for violating campaign finance laws. In purely monetary terms, the case against DSouza is piffling. The indictment charges him with making bogus campaign contribution to the tune of $20,000 (against the individual limit of $2,500), through straw donors, for a Senate race involving a Republican candidate in New York who eventually lost to the Democratic incumbent in 2012. DSouza is then said to have reimbursed donors for the amount, thus circumventing election laws that specifically prohibits any person from making any contribution in the name of another. Few political activists take this route in recent times because such modest candidate donations have been dramatically surpassed by the increasingly common practice, sanctioned by court decision, of using nonprofit groups as a vehicle to make unlimited contributions to independent political committees. But a routine FBI investigation of campaign filings by various candidates triggered off closer scrutiny of DSouzas alleged infractions, and from then on, the law of the land took over, much as it did in the Devyani Khobragade case, regardless of the level of the infringement, which DSouza attorney described as at worst, an act of misguided friendship, because the candidate and the contributor were friends going back to their college days. As far as Bharara is concerned, the two charges, including one count of illegal campaign contribution and one of causing misrepresentation, calls for two years and five years respectively in the clink for DSouza. As we have long said, this Office and the FBI take a zero tolerance approach to corruption of the electoral process. If, as alleged, the defendant directed others to make contributions to a Senate campaign and reimbursed them, that is a serious violation of federal campaign finance laws, Bharara said. Thus it transpires that two Indian-Americans, both of whom immigrated to the US in the 1970s, one as a two-year old toddler and another as a high-school teen, will have their day in court. Bharara, 46, worked his way up the liberal political ladder in Washington DC via the office of New York Senator Charles Schumer, whose clout with the Obama administration is said to have been instrumental in landing the Ferozepur-born crusader in the most powerful Attorneys office in the US - the Southern District of New York, which includes Manhattan. Meantime, the Mumbai-born DSouza, who is 52, became a superstar in the ultraconservative Republican firmament after working his way as a policy advisor in the Reagan White House, and most recently dissing the Obama liberals with a toxic documentary about President Barack Obama. Bhararas crusade against Bhrashtachar * Takes down Indian-American business icon Rajat Gupta and Sri Lankan Raj Rajaratnam for insider trading * Insists on prosecuting Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade for visa fraud * Prosecutes Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad * Prosecutes Purna Chandra Aramalla on charges of defrauding Medicaid and Medicare and money laundering * Prosecutes Dinesh DSouza for election financing laws violation
Posted on: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 01:50:35 +0000
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