John Ashe, the president of the United Nations General Assembly in 2013, was arrested by the FBI and charged Tuesday for accepting over $1 million in bribes, reports The Associated Press.
U.S. prosecutors have accused Ashe, who also served as the Permanent Representative of Antigua and Barbuda to the U.N., of accepting over $1.3 million in bribes from Chinese businesspeople.
He and five others face conspiracy and bribery related charges, those including Francis Lorenzo, a deputy U.N. ambassador from the Dominican Republic, and Chinese billionaire Ng Lap Seng, the head of a major real estate development company based in Macau who was arrested two weeks ago, according to AP.
The complaint alleges that Ng used intermediaries to pay Ashe more than $500,000, and in exchange, Ashe "submitted a U.N. document to the U.N. Secretary General, which claimed that there was a purported need to build the U.N. Macau Conference Center," which would reportedly serve as a satellite operation for the world body, according to Newsday.
Ashe also allegedly received more than $800,000 in bribes from "various Chinese businessmen," which were arranged by two of the other defendants, Shiwei Yan and Heidi Hong Pao.
U.S. prosectors charged that Ashe, who is from Antigua and Barbuda, "shared a portion of the bribe payments" with senior Antiguan government officials, including the prime minister. He also reportedly used the bribe money to pay for family vacations, his BMW lease payments, Rolex watches and construction of a $30,000 basketball court at his home in Dobbs Ferry, New York.
In all, from 2012 to 2014, Ashe deposited more than $3 million from foreign officials and governments in accounts at two American banks, the complaint said, according to Reuters.
Ashe was also charged with filing "false and fraudulent" U.S. income tax returns in 2014 and 2015, allegedly omitting "a total of more than $1.2 million of income."
