{"id":485717,"date":"2019-05-10T15:17:45","date_gmt":"2019-05-10T21:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=834257"},"modified":"2019-05-10T15:17:45","modified_gmt":"2019-05-10T21:17:45","slug":"fugees-pras-michel-pleads-not-guilty-to-federal-charges-of-conspiracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/fugees-pras-michel-pleads-not-guilty-to-federal-charges-of-conspiracy\/","title":{"rendered":"Fugees\u2019 Pras Michel Pleads Not Guilty to Federal Charges of Conspiracy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Fugees<\/a>\u2019 Pras<\/a> Michael pleaded not guilty to federal charges of conspiracy and falsifying records stemming from the rapper\u2019s alleged role in a Malaysian wealth fund\u2019s campaign finance violations.<\/p>\n

According to Bloomberg<\/em><\/a>, the Justice Department have pursued charges against several people tied to 1MDB, a wealth fund tasked with promoting economic development in Malaysia, over the fund\u2019s contributions to then-President Barack Obama\u2019s re-election campaign in 2012.<\/p>\n

Michel \u2013 facing one charge of conspiracy to defraud the United States government and making a false statement and two counts of falsifying records \u2013 is accused of steering 1MDB contributions totaling $1 million to the Obama campaign without disclosing their foreign origin.<\/p>\n

Jho Low, an adviser to Malaysia\u2019s then-prime minister Najib Razak and the alleged mastermind of 1MDB\u2019s \u201cslush fund,\u201d reportedly met Michel at one of the star-studded parties Low hosted in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to the indictment, between June 2012 and November 2012, Low directed the transfer of approximately $21,600,000 from foreign entities and accounts to Michel for the purpose of funneling significant sums of money into the United States presidential election as purportedly legitimate contributions, all while concealing the true source of the money,\u201d the Justice Department said<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo facilitate the excessive contributions and conceal their true source, Michel paid approximately $865,000 of the money received from Low to about 20 straw donors, or conduits, so that the straw donors could make donations in their names to a presidential joint fundraising committee.  In addition, Michel personally directed more than $1 million of the money received from Low to an independent expenditure committee also involved in the presidential election in 2012.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Michel is extremely disappointed that so many years after the fact the government would bring charges related to 2012 campaign contributions. Mr. Michel is innocent of these charges and looks forward to having the case heard by a jury,\u201d the rapper\u2019s lawyer Barry Pollack said in a statement (via CNN<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Michel is due back in court on May 16th. After entering his plea, Michel was released and given permission to take residence in either of California or Florida home. It\u2019s unclear how much prison time Michel could face if found guilty on the charges.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Fugees\u2019 Pras Michael pleaded not guilty to federal charges of conspiracy and falsifying records stemming from the rapper\u2019s alleged role in a Malaysian wealth fund\u2019s campaign finance violations. According to Bloomberg, the Justice Department have pursued charges against several people tied to 1MDB, a wealth fund tasked with promoting economic development in Malaysia, over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-485717","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-19 01:59:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=485717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/485717\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=485717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=485717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=485717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}