The story of Pras Michel, a former rapper of the famous group the Fugees who was convicted on Wednesday of money laundering and of trying to influence the US government in favor of China, involves some of the biggest Asian political and financial scandals of recent years.
Pras Michel is 50 years old and is best known for being one of the founders of the Fugees, one of the most famous hip hop groups of the nineties, together with Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean. A Washington District Court on Wednesday found him guilty on ten counts, including money laundering, conspiracy and espionage for a foreign country. The penalty has not yet been decided, but could reach a maximum of ten years’ imprisonment.
The trial against him was quite remarkable and daring, because among other things it involved a number of politicians and famous people: among others, they testified Leonardo DiCaprio and former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
But it is above all the scandals in which Michel found himself involved that are remarkable: the former rapper allegedly went into business with the Malaysian entrepreneur Jho Low, who is still one of the most wanted people in Asia for a huge scandal financial institution that nearly bankrupted all of Malaysia. He was also involved in the scandal of Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire who fled to the United States and reinvented himself as a dissident against the regime that governs China, but whose figure is still rather controversial today.
The most serious allegations against Michel concern his relationship with Jho Low. Michel and Low would have met in 2006: at the time Low was considered one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world, who led a life of exceptional luxury: he was famous for parties with many international celebrities, he bought luxury houses in many cities, paintings by Monet and Basquiat, a 300-foot superyacht he called Equanimity. Also – this is probably what he is most famous for in the West – Low financed some Hollywood films, including The Wolf of Wall Street by Martin Scorsese, with Leonardo DiCaprio.
Jho Low (right) at the Grammy ceremony in 2014 with Alicia Keys (Prensa Internacional/ZUMAPRESS)
According to the indictment, Low allegedly gave Michel $88 million over several years to try to gain political influence in the United States through him. A small portion of this money ($856,000) would be used to make large donations to former President Barack Obama’s election campaign in 2012, which Michel would make personally or through a series of nominees.
In 2015, however, it was discovered that Low’s money did not come from his entrepreneurial activity, but had been embezzled from the investment fund set up by the Malaysian government to support the country’s economic development. The fund, which was supposed to build infrastructure and support the local population, was actually used as a source of personal wealth by Low and, according to the allegations, also by senior members of the Malaysian government, including Prime Minister Najib Razak.
Eventually it was discovered that the fund, which was called 1MDB, was missing $4.5 billion, probably embezzled by Low and the others. The scandal was huge and caused huge problems for the Malaysian economy. Low escaped and to this day is still nowhere to be found. The most probable hypothesis, supported by some journalistic inquiries, is that he has found refuge in China.
Despite the scandals, however, Pras Michel continued to collaborate with Low and at one point even tried to influence an American federal investigation that was investigating a case of embezzlement by Low himself.
Michel was then involved – in a more mild way – in the scandal of Guo Wengui, a Chinese billionaire who, after a series of deals gone bad in China, accused the Chinese leadership of corruption and fled to the United States, where he presented himself as a dissident politician and associated with some American far-right figures such as Steve Bannon, an early adviser to Donald Trump. Pras Michel allegedly received large sums of money to try to convince the US government to hand Guo Wengui back to China, to no avail.
The figure of Guo Wengui is rather problematic because, although it is clear that at the moment he is persecuted by China, his entrepreneurial activities and his public acquaintances make him a rather ambiguous character, and often considered unreliable even in the United States.
It is unclear whether any of the foreign influence operations in which Michel participated were successful. It is unlikely that Low and Michel managed to influence Barack Obama’s administration in any way; they also failed to stop the trial against Low or to obtain Quo Wengui’s extradition to China. It is not even clear, in fact, why such large sums of money have been entrusted in a foreign influence operation to a person who is relatively little known in political and diplomatic circles.
Michel’s defense said the rapper had no idea that he had entered a circle of international influence: he allegedly received money from Jho Low because after the end of his music career he lacked new sources of income, and Low had seemed to him an entrepreneur legitimate.