Pauline Kanchanalak

Pauline Kanchanalak was born in 1951(?) in Thailand: she was alledged to be 47 in 1998, according to a Los Angeles Times news article dated July 30, 1998 and was educated at Stanford University.

Kanchanalak is a prominent Thai business woman who is the sister-in-law of Duangnet Kronenberg. Kanchanalak left the United States for her native Thailand in January 1997, when her ties to major DNC donors were coming under scrutiny; her lawyer said she was "terrified" to be facing so much attention. She voluntarily returned to Washington from Bangkok on July 29, 1997, so she could answer the charges contained in a 24-count indictment returned July 13. Both women agreed to plead guilty to campaign financing-related offenses and to cooperate in a Justice Department's investigation, the Campaign Financing Task Force. Kanchanalak and Kronenberg entered their guilty pleas before the U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman in Washington D.C. at 2:00 p.m. on Friday, June 23, 2000. The two are among 25 people charged by the Campaign Financing Task Force, which was established four years ago by Attorney General Janet Reno to investigate allegations of campaign financing abuses in the 1996 election cycle.Kronenberg faced a maximum penalty of one year of imprisonment and a fine of $100,000. In July 1998, Kanchanalak and Kronenberg were indicted on charges connected to the conduct to which they have now agreed to plead guilty. In December 1998 and February 1999, Judge Friedman dismissed various counts in the pending indictment against the two, but the Task Force appealed Judge Friedman's decisions, and obtained a reversal of those rulings in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. All of the dismissed counts were reinstated by the D.C. Circuit, which held, among other things, that, under current law, foreign nationals may not contribute either federal ("hard") or non-federal ("soft") money to campaign committees in the United States.

References

io:Usana kampaniala financo-skandalo di 1996