Imaad Zuberi, a California venture capitalist and campaign fundraiser who worked to gain influence with prominent Republicans and Democrats, including former President Donald Trump and President Biden, was sentenced to a dozen years in prison for illegal donations and foreign agent lobbying schemes.
A judge also ordered him to pay $15.7 million in restitution, along with a criminal fine of $1.75 million.
Zuberi, 50, pleaded guilty in November 2019 to charges of tax evasion, making nearly $1 million in illegal campaign contributions using straw donations and foreign funds, and falsifying records of his extensive work as a foreign agent on behalf of Sri Lanka, as well as lobbying for individuals and governments from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, Bahrain, and Libya.
This was after federal prosecutors detailed the foreign lobbying schemes carried out by Zuberi, alleging that the campaign fundraiser who donated to Democrats and Republicans concealed work for shadowy interests around the world. The Justice Department said that Zuberi repeatedly violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act in receiving millions of dollars from foreign actors and lobbying Congress on their behalf.
For years, Zuberi donated mostly to Democrats before throwing large sums at Trump’s inaugural committee after his win in 2016. Zuberi was a top fundraiser for President Barack Obama, and when Sheikh Mohammed al Rahbani and his business associate gave Zuberi $850,000 to donate to Obama’s 2012 reelection inauguration, a transaction that is illegal under U.S. law, prosecutors say he actually only donated $97,500 of it to Obama before pocketing the rest for himself. The Californian was also a top fundraiser for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and was listed as a “Hillblazer” after raising over $100,000 for her 2016 campaign.
After Clinton lost, the venture capitalist pivoted quickly to the GOP, donating $1.1 million to various Republicans in the months after Trump’s victory, including a $900,000 donation through his Avenue Ventures LLC company to Trump’s inaugural committee. Zuberi also pleaded guilty last June in connection to the obstruction of New York prosecutors who were investigating his Trump donations and which foreign nationals were trying to pump money into U.S. politics.
Messages released by the government over the past few months detail Zuberi’s successful efforts to get close to a host of politicians.
Zuberi is pictured in multiple photographs shaking hands with, standing and smiling, and at roundtables with Obama in 2014 and in multiple pictures the same year with Clinton. He was also pictured smiling with the then-Democratic presidential candidate and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, in January 2016, noting in an email that “I am lucky to be with the former President of the United States and the next President of the United States.” He is also pictured smiling with then-GOP House Speaker Paul Ryan in November 2016.
The convicted criminal is also pictured numerous times with then-Vice President Joe Biden in records made public by the Justice Department. Zuberi was photographed with Biden, Democratic Rep. Tony Cardenas of California, and former Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley of Iowa in October 2014. An email to Zuberi the next month is captioned “your friends and you with Vice President Joe Biden in Marrakesh Morocco this week” and is accompanied by a picture of Zuberi with Biden. Michael Schrum of Biden’s Office of the Vice President sent Zuberi an email in December 2014 which read, “Here you go, lmaad. Our photographer is just now working through the Morocco trip. Here are your business partner’s photos with The Vice President of the United States of America (VPOTUS).”
The businessman also tried to work his way closer to Biden through Fran Person, who had served as Biden’s body man and close assistant for eight years before leaving in 2014, after which Zuberi began to cultivate a closer relationship with him. Person lost a congressional race in South Carolina in 2016 to then-Rep. Mick Mulvaney.
Zuberi was working to unfreeze up to $30 billion in government assets that had been locked up in Libya after Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi was ousted from power, and he sought U.S. help in doing so. Zuberi’s WhatsApp messages from 2015 reveal lengthy discussions with a redacted associate as they talk about setting up meetings in Washington, D.C., and Paris to try to unlock the Libyan money. At one point, Zuberi asked, “Did you discuss the budget that Fran, Bassel, and Mike had?” Politico reported that besides Person, Zuberi was also talking about attorney Bassel Korkor and University of Southern California professor Michael Mische.
Zuberi, Person, and others met at the Four Seasons Hotel in Paris in May 2015 with the alleged Libyan deputy prime minister to try to figure out how to unfreeze the billions. “Don’t talk about women in front of Fran. He is close to VP Biden… He is like adopted son to VP,” Zuberi had cautioned his associate shortly before the meeting.
“Zuberi turned acting as an unregistered foreign agent into a business enterprise,” John Demers, the DOJ’s assistant attorney general for national security, said Thursday. “He used foreign money to fund illegal campaign contributions that bought him political influence, and used that influence to lobby U.S. officials for policy changes on behalf of numerous foreign principals. … This sentence should deter others who would seek to corrupt our political processes and compromise our institutions in exchange for foreign cash.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to Zuberi’s lawyers for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
The convicted criminal also had a number of meetings with Biden himself, but Biden spokesman Andrew Bates told the Associated Press in November that the meetings were “in group settings — mostly donor roundtables” and that Zuberi’s messages misrepresented the talks he had with Biden, who did not have “any way of knowing” of Zuberi’s illegal actions.
Prosecutors have highlighted Zuberi’s lucrative work in 2014 and 2015 for Ukrainian oligarch Dimitry Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch whom the Justice Department attempted to extradite from Austria for years on charges of bribery, racketeering, and money laundering. Firtash was represented by conservative lawyers Joe diGenova and his wife Victoria Toensing, associates of former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
