A suspended deputy United Nations ambassador from the Dominican Republic pleaded guilty on Wednesday to charges that he participated in a scheme to bribe a former UN General Assembly president.
Francis Lorenzo, 48, admitted in federal court in Manhattan that he engaged in conspiracies to commit bribery and money laundering, as part of an agreement to cooperate in the US investigation.
Lorenzo admitted he facilitated bribe payments from Ng Lap Seng, a billionaire real estate developer in Macau, to John Ashe, a former UN ambassador from Antigua & Barbuda and who served as General Assembly president from 2013 to 2014.
Those bribes, Lorenzo admitted, were paid to Ashe to seek UN support of a UN-sponsored conference center in Macau. Lorenzo, who prosecutors said received bribes himself from Ng, said payments were also made to other unnamed foreign officials.
“I understand what I was doing, as I described, it was wrong,” he said in court.
Lorenzo is the third defendant to plead guilty to charges arising out of a case US prosecutors announced in October involving a scheme starting in 2011 to pay more than $1.3 million in bribes to Ashe.
Prosecutors said the bribes included more than $500,000 in payments that Ng made through intermediaries including Lorenzo and Jeff Yin, Ng’s assistant.
Ashe also received more than $800,000 from Chinese businessmen to support their interests within the United Nations and Antigua, prosecutors said.