Kim, Wife Plead Guilty in O.C. Campaign Case

LOS ANGELES — Congressman Jay C. Kim and his wife pleaded guilty in Los Angeles federal court Monday to knowingly accepting more than $230,000 in illegal campaign contributions from corporate and foreign donors.

Judge Richard A. Paez ordered the Diamond Bar Republican and his wife, June, to return to court Oct. 23 for sentencing.

Under terms of an agreement negotiated with prosecutors, Kim was allowed to plead to three misdemeanor violations of federal election law. June Kim pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors.

Kim also entered guilty pleas to five felonies on behalf of his fund-raising arm, the Jay Kim for Congress Committee, but he will not be held personally responsible for those crimes.

Kim represents Yorba Linda, Placentia and Brea, as well as portions of Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties.

The couple face a maximum six months in prison and $635,000 in fines, according to the plea agreement, and the campaign committee could be fined as much as $2.5 million.

In accepting their pleas, Paez made clear that he is not legally bound by the agreement. He warned the Kims that he could impose a stiffer punishment from which they will have waived their right of appeal.

Flanked by their attorneys, the couple were questioned closely by the judge to be certain that they fully understood their rights and the terms of the plea agreement.

They also acknowledged the accuracy of a statement of facts read to the court by Assistant U.S. Atty. Steven A. Mansfield, detailing a litany of fund-raising violations. Some of those crimes occurred while the Kims knew they were under investigation by the FBI.

Methodically, Paez then took the defendants through each count. “How do you plead?” he asked Kim and his wife.

“I plead guilty, Your Honor,” replied the congressman, who had consistently denied any wrongdoing during a four-year federal probe of his campaign fund-raising activities.

In entering his pleas, Kim admitted accepting a $50,000 donation from a Taiwanese national, even though he knew that federal law barred contributions from nonresident foreigners; that he knowingly accepted an illegal corporate contribution of $12,000 from Nikko Enterprise, a New York company; and that he directed his own corporation, JayKim Engineers, to provide $83,000 in services for his 1992 campaign.

June Kim, who helped manage his three campaigns for Congress, pleaded guilty to knowingly accepting more than $19,000 in illegal corporate donations. One contribution totaling $14,000 was laundered in 1994 through an electronics firm owned by Kim’s campaign treasurer, Seokuk Ma.

Ma was convicted in federal court this year on felony charges of filing false campaign statements to the Federal Election Commission. He will be sentenced next month.

June Kim also pleaded guilty to knowingly accepting $5,450 from seven corporations after a 1994 fund-raiser in Los Angeles.

The felony violations against the Jay Kim for Congress Committee involve the concealment of illegal contributions in reports filed with the Federal Election Commission between 1992 and 1997.

The FBI probe was launched in 1993 after a series in The Times disclosed that Kim had used hundreds of thousands of dollars from JayKim Engineers to finance his first bid for Congress.

In the far-reaching investigation that followed, the American affiliates of five South Korean conglomerates pleaded guilty to laundering illegal contributions into Kim’s campaign. They paid fines totaling $1.6 million.