Lippo History

In 1984, Huang worked as an officer of the Hong Kong Chinese Bank, which had been purchased by Mochtar Riady, the head of an Indonesian corporation called the Lippo Group.

Lippo is an "empire" with billions in assets. It is a family controlled conglomerate of "overseas Chinese" built on banking, real estate, securities, insurance, the financing of infrastructure projects and oil exploration.

The group was started in the 1960s in Jakarta by Mochtar Riady. His parents had immigrated from China's Fujian Province to Indonesia.

Lippo, shrewdly constructed of hundreds of subsidiaries in dozens of countries, aggressively pursues business in the Pacific Rim and the United States. It has a Vietnam related partnership with the Charlotte, North Carolina based First Union Corp., one of the biggest banks in the United States and owns Worthen Bank, in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Riady used the Worthen Bank, purchased in 1984, as a vehicle to later that year purchase the Hong Kong Chinese Bank.

A TIMELY CHINESE LOAN TO CLINTON

Clinton has a history with Riady and his son James, a key Lippo official and Worthen director. Riady's Worthen Bank (now Boatman's Bank of Little Rock) made itself of great help to Clinton by approving a timely $3.5 million loan to Clinton's cash-strapped 1992 presidential campaign.

After Clinton was elected in November 1992, China Resources Holding Company (Hua Ren Jituan), owned by the Chinese Communist Party, bought control of Riady's Hong Kong Chinese Bank, putting the Riady's Lippo Group in business with the Red Chinese.

The Sunday Times said "western intelligence sources" report Hong Kong's China Resources Holding Company is a "front for Chinese intelligence."

Huang was transferred to head Lippo's U.S. affiliate in Los Angeles, California, where he met with numerous White House officials, international bankers and corporate executives to lobby for expanded trade and diplomatic relations with Vietnam.

He was later hired by the Clinton administration as a Commerce Department official. Republican legislators believe a $780,000 bonus paid to Huang by Lippo was for his efforts to influence the Clinton administration to open Vietnamese markets.

Lippo, at the time, was seeking White House and Commerce Department help in expanding its $6.9 billion real estate and investment holdings into Vietnam.

CLINTON BETRAYED A POW/MIA PLEDGE

Clinton acknowledged Dec. 3rd that he received a letter in 1993 from Riady urging him to normalize relations with Vietnam. The March 9th, 1993 letter confided that two Lippo managers were checking out investment opportunities in Vietnam. Lippo opened a representative office in Vietnam in 1993.

Clinton betrayed a 1992 campaign pledge to POW/MIA families and Vietnam veterans for an "honest and full accounting" of Americans missing in action during the Vietnam War, when he accommodated Lippo's desires and lifted a 30-year trade embargo against Vietnam in February 1994. Diplomatic relations were normalized in July 1995. Lippo and First Union Corp. scrambled to take advantage of the new market potential in Vietnam.

As a result of meetings Clinton had with the Riady's in Jakarta in 1994 and other promotional trips made by Ron Brown and Huang, Lippo signed more than a billion dollars with deals in China, Indonesia, Vietnam and the United States.

In the past two years, Huang made about 70 trips to the White House and had several personal meetings with Clinton. Riady met with Clinton dozens of times during Clinton’s first term. In September 1995, according to the Sunday Times, Riady and Huang met with Clinton pressing him for retention of China’s most favored nation status.

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