A real estate developer — whose $72 million apartment complex in the Harbor Gateway area was approved in 2015 by the Los Angeles City Council — pleaded guilty Thursday to illegally donating hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions.
Samuel Leung, 70, was immediately sentenced to 500 hours of community service and five years of formal probation following his plea to a felony count of conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Leung was also ordered to deposit $2.5 million in an escrow account that will remain there until the city’s ethics commission determines the final amount owed, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
More than $600,000 was contributed by individuals and companies connected to Leung over a six-year period beginning in 2009, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
Leung’s former secretary, Sofia David, 61, is a fugitive who is facing the same charge, which was filed against both defendants in February 2018, according to the District Attorney’s Office.
The felony complaint alleged that Leung and David “caused multiple individuals working for Leung, along with Leung’s business partners, Leung’s relatives and relatives of Leung’s employees and business partners, to make campaign contributions to Los Angeles area politicians with the power and ability to change zoning rules, specifically an industrially-zoned property located at 1311 W. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles, which Leung wished to develop into an apartment complex.”
According to the complaint, the contributions included payments to candidates for office, re-election campaigns and payments to political action committees and office holder accounts, including the campaigns of then-Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who was running for Congress and is now a county supervisor; City Council members Joe Buscaino, Gil Cedillo and Nury Martinez; now-former council members Mitch Englander and Jose Huizar; and city council candidate Warren Furutani, along with an independent political action committee that supported Mayor Eric Garcetti.
The complaint also alleged that Leung and David “caused multiple campaign contributors in Los Angeles County to be unlawfully reimbursed for their campaign contributions,” and that Leung used pseudonyms and aliases, as well as a co-worker’s identity without her knowledge or permission, to make campaign contributions between 2009 and 2015 to current and prospective Los Angeles-area politicians “who had the power to vote on zoning rules affecting property he owned.”
Leung’s 352-unit Sea Breeze project was approved by the Los Angeles City Council in February 2015. Garcetti and the City Council overruled planning commission officials in changing zoning rules to allow the project to move forward.
An investigation by the Los Angeles Times identified some of the donors as being working-class residents without the obvious financial means to pay $500 or more to a political campaign. Leung told the newspaper then that he did not reimburse any campaign contributions, but the District Attorney’s Office alleged that he reimbursed many of the donors.
The state’s Fair Political Practices Commission opened an investigation into the campaign contributions after receiving a complaint letter in October 2016.
The criminal case stemmed from a joint investigation by the District Attorney’s Bureau of Investigation, the city’s Ethics Commission, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.