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.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘POINT OF NO RETURN’: The Caribbean nation needs increased international funding and support for a multinational force to help police tackle expanding gang violence The top UN official in Haiti on Monday sounded an alarm to the UN Security Council that escalating gang violence is liable to lead the Caribbean nation to “a point of no return.” Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Haiti Maria Isabel Salvador said that “Haiti could face total chaos” without increased funding and support for the operation of the Kenya-led multinational force helping Haiti’s police to tackle the gangs’ expanding violence into areas beyond the capital, Port-Au-Prince. Most recently, gangs seized the city of Mirebalais in central Haiti, and during the attack more than 500 prisoners were freed, she said.
DEMONSTRATIONS: A protester said although she would normally sit back and wait for the next election, she cannot do it this time, adding that ‘we’ve lost too much already’ Thousands of protesters rallied on Saturday in New York, Washington and other cities across the US for a second major round of demonstrations against US President Donald Trump and his hard-line policies. In New York, people gathered outside the city’s main library carrying signs targeting the US president with slogans such as: “No Kings in America” and “Resist Tyranny.” Many took aim at Trump’s deportations of undocumented migrants, chanting: “No ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], no fear, immigrants are welcome here.” In Washington, protesters voiced concern that Trump was threatening long-respected constitutional norms, including the right to due process. The
RSS