The pair have been charged with funnelling foreign money to American political candidates and a pro-Trump election committee
UNTIL THIS week Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, two Florida-based businessmen, played supporting roles in the impeachment drama surrounding President Donald Trump. Messrs Parnas and Fruman acted as intermediaries between Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York and current lawyer to the president, and various prosecutors in Ukraine, in his attempts to discredit the family of Joe Biden.
It is worth noting that under America’s permissive campaign-finance laws none of this would have been illegal if the funds donated had come from a legitimate money-making activity in America and had been given by American citizens. Messrs Parnas and Fruman seemed to believe they had the influence-buying business in America figured out. They planned to enter the recreational-marijuana business, again, according to the indictment, with disguised money from a foreign source.
In 2016 Mr Parnas had contributed $50,000 to the Trump campaign. This was despite the fact that the same year a federal judge in New York had ordered Mr Parnas to pay more than $500,000 to an investor in a failed project to produce a Hollywood film called “Anatomy of an Assassin”. Mr Parnas has still not repaid the money and is being pursued over the debt in Florida, according to court records.
Breaches of campaign-finance law are frequent enough. But even the hungriest fundraisers know that accepting donations from foreigners is forbidden. Those with long memories will remember the controversy stirred up by Republicans in 2015 over whether donations by foreigners to the Clintons’ charitable foundation amounted to influence-peddling.
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