The Department of Justice announced Wednesday that a Fairfax, Va., man, Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, pleaded guilty to a scheme to cover up $3.5 million paid by the Pakistani government to fund lobbying efforts on behalf of its policy in Kashmir.
Fai was the director of the Kashmiri American Council, a Washington nongovernmental organization that claimed to raise funds in the United States to advocate on behalf of self-determination for the Kashmiri people.
According to the Justice Department, however, the council and Fai were secretly funded by Pakistani government officials to try and influence U.S. policy on Kashmir.
"For the last 20 years, Mr. Fai secretly took millions of dollars from Pakistani intelligence and lied about it to the U.S. government,” Neil MacBride, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a written statement. “As a paid operative of ISI, he did the bidding of his handlers in Pakistan while he met with U.S. elected officials, funded high-profile conferences and promoted the Kashmiri cause to decision-makers in Washington.”
Fai, according to the Justice Department, repeatedly lied about how the council received money and the scope of his contacts with the Pakistani government, especially the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI.
Fai admitted that from 1990 until he was arrested on July 19, he concealed the transfer of at least $3.5 million from Pakistani government officials to the council. The money would go to middlemen, who would then pass it along to the council.
Nina Ginsberg of DiMuro Ginsberg in Alexiandria, Va., is listed in the plea agreement (PDF) as Fai’s attorney; she was not immediately available for comment Wednesday afternoon. A representative of the council could not immediately be reached.
Fai faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison on the first charge of conspiracy and a maximum of three years for the second charge of tax evasion. U.S. District Court Judge Liam O’Grady scheduled sentencing for March 9.
There is a significant background story regarding Pakistan. Namely, a Pakistani named Abdul Qadeer Khan was scientifically trained in Europe, earning a Ph.D. in metallurgy from the Catholic University of Leuven. Then, using a work visa analogous to the U.S. H-1B, Khan worked for the European conglomerate URENCO in Almelo, the Netherlands from 1972 to 1976. During that period, Khan was systematically stealing nuclear bomb secrets from URENCO. Finally, Khan and his family disappeared in the middle of the night and he became head of a nuclear lab in Pakistan. 22 years later, Pakistan, a 3rd world nation, detonated 6 nuclear weapons in underground tests. Khan has actively proliferated this technology throughout the Muslim world since then as part of a now-infamous proliferation network. For more background, see Atoomspionage dot com, a site that is primarily in Dutch. The English introduction is via the link http://atoomspionage.com/introductie.htm More information is also available via searching for "Khan" in the PDF version of my 2007 investigative article, "The Greedy Gates Immigration Gambit." I believe that Khan's intellectual property theft continues to be significant in determining the amount of aid the U.S. provides to Pakistan. (Recall also the 01 May 2011 raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden.)
Posted by: Dr. Gene Nelson | December 08, 2011 at 12:37 PM
Why should we be surprised? We (the USA) are dealing with a country in which bribery and behind the scene back dealing is a way of life. The real question is why after all the years of dealing with Pakistani officials we apparently did not have this figured out. The next question is how much of this money was funneled sureptiously to American politicians for favorable support? And, what did it get for them?
Posted by: Stephen Julian | December 07, 2011 at 05:33 PM