NEW YORK, Oct 07, 2015 – A judge on Tuesday set bail at $1 million for the former president of the General Assembly, John Ashe, and he was also ordered to wear an electronic bracelet.
Ashe, a former Antigua and Barbuda diplomat, he is accused of accepting $1.3 million in bribes and failing to pay adequate taxes.
He is accused of using his influence to support the building of a UN conference center in Macau by Chinese billionaire David Ng.
The charges allege that payments were made from a South-South News bank account to Ashe beginning in 2011 when he was Antigua’s ambassador to the United Nations and that, from January 2011 to December 2014, Ashe’s wife was paid a $2,500 monthly salary to work as a “climate consultant” for South South News though the charge sheet says there is no evidence that she ever actually did any work for the organisation.
The charges also allege that Ashe got South-South News to pay for Antigua’s then prime minister, Baldwin Spencer, and six others to fly first-class to New York to attend the South South News annual gala which was taking place during the same week as the UN’s annual General Debate in September 2011.
The charge sheet adds that in February 2012, after Ashe and his wife had received some $38,000 in payments from South-South News, in addition to other gifts including travel and the construction of a basketball court at Ashe’s Westchester County home, that Ashe sent a letter to Ban Ki-moon, as an official UN document, stating that Antigua’s prime minister and other heads of state had decided to launch a “Global Business Incubator, Permanent Expo and Meeting Center” hosted in Macau and to be built the Sun Kian Ip group, whose chairman is David Ng.
Payments to Ashe from the South-South News bank account continued and got bigger with some $100,000 paid to Ashe between January and June 2013, in addition to his wife’s monthly salary as well as a separate $25,000 payment to Ashe in February 2013.
Beginning in 2014, Ashe solicited funds from Ng for his General Assembly presidency, including a $200,000 payment from the South-South News bank account that was deposited to Ashe’s account on June 3, 2014.
