Controversies
Corruption controversies have marked Riady's business career. In the 1996 presidential campaign, James Riady was a major campaign contributor to the Democratic Party. In 1998, the United States Senate conducted an investigation of the finance scandal of the 1996 U.S. presidential campaign. James Riady was indicted and pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations by himself and his corporation. He was ordered to pay an 8.6 million U.S. dollar fine for contributing foreign funds to the Democratic Party, the largest fine ever levied in a campaign finance case. In 2008, Riady's close business associate Billy Sindoro, an executive of Riady's Jakarta-based First Media, was filmed handing bribes to officials of Indonesia's anti-monopoly agency, the KPPU. Riady and First Media were then in a business dispute with a Malaysian company and the KPPU was deliberating that dispute. Sindoro was later found guilty of corruption. In December 2008, the Riady-owned Jakarta Globe published a sympathetic portrait of Sindoro in prison where he lamented he would not be able to spend Christmas with his family.
In January 2010, the Washington Post revealed how the 'disgraced' Riady had received a visa waiver by the Obama Administration to re-enter the US, despite having been banned by the Bush administration. Riady's old friend, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton claimed she had no knowledge of the visa waiver. A State Department official, embarrassed by the Post's revelation, said "the reality of his past remains a significant obstacle for future travel to the United States." Riady received a waiver from a rule that forbids entry to foreigners guilty of "a crime involving moral turpitude," a term that government lawyers generally interpret to include fraud.
James Riady lives with his family in Lippo Village, Karawaci, surrounded by security aides. He has been demonized by the media because of his involvement in the campaign financing scandal. Hendardi, an Indonesian human rights activist, once stated that Riady's "major achievement was to export corruption to the U.S."
Read more about this topic: James Riady