Parent Advocates
Search All  
 
UN Diplomat John Ashe Dies While Awaiting Trial To Testify Against Clinton Foundation Donor
In what some are calling convenient timing, a top suspect in a bribery case involving Clinton Foundation donors and the former United Nations General Assembly President has suddenly died of asphyxiation from a barbell. John Ashe, 61, was pumping iron in his Westchester, New York home when authorities say he dropped a barbell on his own throat, crushing his larynx, according to the local medical examiner, reports CNN. The autopsy report will take around 16 weeks to complete.
          
   John Ashe   
UN Diplomat John Ashe Dies While Awaiting Trial To Testify Against Clinton Foundation Donor
LINK

In what some are calling convenient timing, a top suspect in a bribery case involving Clinton Foundation donors and the former United Nations General Assembly President has suddenly died of asphyxiation from a barbell

John Ashe, 61, was pumping iron in his Westchester, New York home when authorities say he dropped a barbell on his own throat, crushing his larynx, according to the local medical examiner, reports CNN. The autopsy report will take around 16 weeks to complete.

This report comes as a shock to many, including the U.S. government who believes Ashe to have been complicit in accepting and facilitating more than $1.3 million in bribes from Chinese billionaire business magnate Ng Lap Seng, a major Clinton Foundation donor. Ashe was awaiting trial and was set to testify on his role in the scandal soon.

Ashe was amid plea negotiations, according to a letter sent to U.S. District Judge Vernon Broderick last month from Ashe’s lawyer, Jeremy Schneider, which raises suspicion on whether or not his death is in fact an accident or a murder conducted on behalf of associated parties.

Ashe was accused last year by United States federal authorities of turning his powerful UN position into a “platform for profit” along with Francis Lorenzo, the ambassador to the UN for the Dominican Republic, who’s been accused of helping Ng pay bribes to Ashe and others political figures in the Caribbean.

This event comes just two months after RT America ran a story outing Clinton Foundation donors who have shown up in the Panama Papers document leak:
At a bail hearing Saturday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Richenthal described Yin, a U.S. citizen, as Ng’s right-hand man in his U.S. operations, someone who played a key role in transmitting funds.

The prosecutor said Yin spoke to law enforcement after his Saturday arrest, admitting he transmitted money on Ng’s behalf to pay people to do unlawful things, though Yin interrupted the prosecutor, saying: “That is not true,” according to a hearing transcript.

Federal Defender Sabrina Shroff, representing Yin, said at the hearing that her client, educated in the United States with family here, may have served as Ng’s “mouthpiece” but the cash and the investments were not Yin’s.

“He doesn’t know what Mr. Seng is doing with the money at the end of the day,” Shroff said.

Ng’s arrest occurred in September of 2015 and spurred the investigation into John Ashe when authorities discovered Ng had, according to Manhattan federal court papers, smuggled over $4.5 million into the United States over several years with the excuse that he had used the money for gambling and buying paintings from art dealers. According to the New York District Attorney Preet Bharara and the FBI, Ng and Yin were previously arrested on September 19, 2015, based on a separate complaint alleging that Ng agreed to make false statements to Customs and Border Protection officers about the true purpose of the cash that Ng and Yin had brought into the U.S. from China since 2013.


Disgraced ex-UN official’s death ‘conveniently timed’
LINK
By Richard Johnson

The death by barbell of disgraced UN official John Ashe could become a bigger obsession for conspiracy theorists than Vince Foster’s 1993 suicide.

Ashe — who was facing trial for tax fraud — died Wednesday afternoon in his house in Westchester County. The UN said he’d had a heart attack. But the local Dobbs Ferry police said Thursday that his throat had been crushed, presumably by a barbell he dropped while pumping iron.

Ashe was due in court Monday with his Chinese businessman co-defendant Ng Lap Seng, who is charged with smuggling $4.5 million into the US since 2013 and lying that it was to buy art and casino chips.

Ng was identified in a 1998 Senate report as the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars illegally funneled through an Arkansas restaurant owner, Charlie Trie, to the Democratic National Committee during the Clinton administration. (Ng was not charged with any crime.)

Ng and Trie had visited the White House several times for Democratic fund-raising events and were photographed with then-President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton.

One source told me, “During the trial, the prosecutors would have linked Ashe to the Clinton bagman Ng. It would have been very embarrassing. His death was conveniently timed.”

Ashe’s lawyer Jeremy Schneider told me he is sure Ashe’s death was an accident. “There is not one iota of evidence that it was homicide. This is nothing at all like Vince Foster.”

Police in Dobbs Ferry village are keeping the investigation open pending an autopsy by the Westchester medical examiner.

 
© 2003 The E-Accountability Foundation