A government watchdog group hit Terry McAuliffe with a campaign finance complaint on Friday over a $350,000 donation he received from a foreign-owned company linked to an overseas money laundering probe, according to a copy of the filing obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The National Legal and Policy Center is asking the FEC to "Promptly investigate" whether the contribution to the Virginia gubernatorial candidate violated federal laws prohibiting campaigns from accepting political donations from foreign nationals.
"Terry McAuliffe has a history of accepting foreign contributions. The FEC must fully investigate these serious charges that he accepted $350,000 in illegal foreign contributions for his current campaign," said Washington, D.C. attorney, Paul Kamenar, counsel to NLPC, who drafted and filed the complaint with the FEC. LycaTel LLC, owned by Sri Lankan-British national Allirajah Subaskaran, gave McAuliffe $350,000 in July, the Free Beacon first reported in early October.
Federal law prohibits campaigns from accepting money from foreign nationals and entities, directly or indirectly, in local, state, and federal elections.
While U.S.-based subsidiaries of foreign corporations can contribute, the donation can't be made under the direction of the company's foreign leadership-which legal experts said can be a murky legal distinction.
"This is effectively a really easy way to launder foreign money into the U.S. political process and to avoid the FEC prohibition on foreign nationals making contributions in U.S. elections," Ben Freeman, director of the Foreign Influence Transparency Initiative at the Center for International Policy, told the Free Beacon earlier this month.
Subaskaran, through his WWW Holding Company and other entities, owns a globe-spanning web of companies in the technology, media, and gaming sectors, many of them with the word "Lyca" in the names.
https://freebeacon.com/democrats/watchdog-hits-mcauliffe-with-campaign-finance-complaint/
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