The Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for involvement in a billion-dollar Malaysia scam that funnelled money into US politics.
The 52-year-old founding member of the 1990s hit trio the Fugees was convicted of money laundering and campaign finance violations in 2023 in a global foreign influence scandal led by the Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho.
In April 2023, a federal jury convicted Michel of 10 counts, including conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. The trial in Washington DC included testimony from the actor Leonardo DiCaprio and the former attorney general Jeff Sessions.
Justice department prosecutors said federal sentencing guidelines recommended a life sentence for Michel, who they said “betrayed his country for money” and “lied unapologetically and unrelentingly to carry out his schemes”.
His sentence, they wrote, “should reflect the breadth and depth of his crimes, his indifference to the risks to his country, and the magnitude of his greed”.
The defence attorney Peter Zeidenberg said his client’s 14-year sentence was “completely disproportionate to the offence”. Michel will appeal against his conviction and sentence, according to his lawyer…..
Michel was accused of helping [Jho] Low secretly channel money into then president Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign via shell companies, hiding the donations’ origins.
Michel also tried to end a justice department investigation of Low, tampered with two witnesses and perjured himself at trial, prosecutors said.
The lengthy jail sentence against Pras Michel adds to a list that includes Najib himself, two Goldman Sachs bankers, two Swiss directors of PetroSaudi, three Kuwaitis and two senior figures of the Aabar/IPIC sovereign funds of UAE.
It has been a decade long process and Michel and the two Swiss directors, Tarek Obaid and Patrick Mahony are still walking free as they appeal their convictions.
However, the sentence against the rap singer is notably far longer than any we have seen so far.
He greedily kept $70 million for himself out of $130 million passed to him by 1MDB fraudster Jho Low, first to pass as illegal donations to Obama campaigns in return for PR opportunities with the Obama administration (such as his million dollar photo with the President and Najib’s golf game in Hawaii), then to bribe Trump administration officials into lobbying the Justice Department to drop the charges over 1MDB.
Next, it got darker still. By 2017 Jho Low was conspiring and conniving at the highest levels in China in return for assistance in covering up the 1MDB thefts. Najib agreed to major strategic concessions for collaboration which saw billions of ringgit from inflated Malaysian government contracts pass through Chinese companies and then back channelled into paying 1MDB debts.
As part of that enterprise Jho engaged Pras Michel and a network of senior Republican officials to extend their lobbying to carry out Chinese state objectives in Washington, including the extradition of the wanted billionaire Miles Guo.
For this Pras Michel was condemned by the courts not only as violator of election law and an illegal lobbyist but as a traitor to his country’s national interests.
Hence the heavy sentence, made worse doubtless by Michel’s refusal to acknowledge guilt. By comparison the Goldman Sachs’ senior banker, Tim Leissner, who purloined even greater sums in his role as a key perpetrator of the 1MDB scandal, managed to sign up to a plea deal in return to a mere 2 years.
Indeed, as one by one these players are brought to justice, it is the names of those who have got off light or even escaped accountability altogether that tell the wider story. Senior figures, who should have known better than the feckless musician, have been let off with fines or even pardoned.
The Obama fundraiser, Frank White, was the player first exposed by Sarawak Report, lifting the lid on the Washington 1MDB lobbying scandal back in 2015. 1MDB money funded through his company granted a multi-million contract to manage a ‘solar power project’ flowed into Democrat campaigns.
Rapper Pras Michel and he (an office supplies professional) were then granted the management of a half billion dollar investment fund backed by Aabar and 1MDB. It closed after Sarawak Report exposed the connection. In January this year White voluntarily surrendered $20 million to the US Department of Justice to be returned to Malaysia. He has never been charged.
Likewise, the Republican political fundraiser and finance chairman of the National Republican Committee, Elliot Broidy, who sought to channel some $70 million through his wife’s law firm to pay for his lobbying activities and chased a quarter of a million dollar ‘security’ contract from Najib on top, plead guilty to receiving some $9 million from Jho Low. Trump pardoned him before he could be sentenced.
The final reckoning lies with Malaysia’s former prime minister who is serving a relatively paltry sentence from a portion of his corruption charges whilst both he and his wife have strung their cases and appeals out for the best part of a decade as they seek pardons and concessions as they plead their innocence.