Posted by Sean Myers on Jan. 19, 2016
A Senegalese man convicted of embezzling more than a billion dollars in public funds is lobbying the U.S. government for his freedom.
Karim Wade's hiring of Nelson Mullins Riley and Scarbrough LLP is an example of the relatively common practice of wealthy or powerful foreign nationals getting into legal hot water, and then turning to Washington lobbyists to build support for their cases.
Wade has been in a Senegalese jail since April 13, 2013 for embezzling $1.4 billion in assets. He committed the fraud during his time serving in numerous cabinet posts in the Senegalese government, when his father was president. Wade was convicted in March 2015, and sentenced to six years in prison.
Wade's lobbyists have filed Foreign Agent Registration Act papers saying they are asking the U.S. government to take a stand on "international criminal justice reform."
Another recent example of a foreigner facing criminal sanctions and seeking U.S. support is Dan Adamescu, a Romanian businessman who was arrested in 2014 for bribing four judges presiding over bankruptcy cases involving several of his ventures. Soon after his arrest, he hired the public relations group Qorvis to lobby Congress and "raise awareness of the plight of Dan Adamescu, a political prisoner in Romania."
Similarly, the family of Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury, the former minister of Bangladesh and a convicted war criminal, has lobbied Congress following Chowdhury's execution last November. The family of the former minister hired the lobbying organization Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld to educate the U.S. government about Chowdhury's "politically motivated conviction and death sentence."
Some of these foreign parties are willing to go to great lengths to appeal to the U.S. government. Between July and October of 2014 alone, Adamescu spent an estimated $130,000 on lobbying for his cause.
Some people and organizations who "caught our eye" last week:
