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Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai

'No Strings Attached': Man Claims Secret $3.5M From Pakistani Spy Agency Had No Influence

Ryan J. Reilly | April 3, 2012, 6:27AM

Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai

Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai admits that he concealed more than $3.5 million in secret funds that his Kashmiri American Council (KAC) received from Pakistan's spy agency. He just doesn't think all that cash from Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) had any impact on his work.

Fai was sentenced to two years in prison on Friday for his role in a scheme that used straw donors to hide the foreign money Fai used to lobby on behalf of his native Kashmir.

While the 62-year-old had already pleaded guilty back in December, he argued that his lobbying efforts were not affected by the millions he received from Pakistan's intelligence agency.

"Because he needed financial resources, Dr. Fai was willing to accept funding from any donor that was willing to contribute as long as there were no strings attached to the receipt of the funds," his lawyer in a court document ahead of his sentencing.

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Topics: DOJ, ISI, Justice Department, Lobbyists, Pakistan, Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai

Pakistan

Man Pleads Guilty In Plot Of Pakistani Spies To Lobby U.S. Politicians

Ryan J. Reilly | December 7, 2011, 1:30PM

Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai

A Pakistani-American man charged in July with running a secret Pakistani intelligence center in the United States pleaded guilty to "conspiracy and tax violations in connection with a decades-long scheme to conceal the transfer of at least $3.5 million from the government of Pakistan to fund his lobbying efforts in America related to Kashmir," the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai, 62, faces a maximum of five years in prison on the conspiracy count and three years on the tax violation when he's sentence on March 9. Under his plea agreement, Fai will forfeit his interest in $142,851.32 that was seized by the government after his arrest.

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Topics: Pakistan, Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai

Pakistan

The Man Behind Pakistan Spy Agency's Plot to Influence Washington

October 3, 2011, 12:08PM

Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai

By Kim Barker and Habiba Nosheen, ProPublica, and Raheel Khursheed, Special to ProPublica

The night should have been a coup for Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai. Once a poor villager from halfway around the world, Fai had become the go-to man in Washington, D.C., for his cause, Kashmir, the Himalayan region long caught in a tug of war between Pakistan and India.

And there he was on March 4, 2010, hosting a fundraiser for Rep. Dan Burton, the Indiana Republican who had been the chief supporter in Congress of Fai's Kashmiri American Council for 20 years. In some ways, the event inside Fai's home in Fairfax, Va., symbolized everything that Fai had become, featuring speeches in the living room and kebabs and curries in the basement.

But it barely camouflaged how Fai's carefully built world was collapsing.

The FBI was monitoring almost every move Fai made, every email he sent, every call he received. Investigators believed Fai's main donors were not well-meaning idealists but members of the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, the most powerful of Pakistan's spy agencies.