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If you read the entire indictment, it looks like there was a sort of quid pro quo going on. Sun's husband met with Chinese government officials who facilitated his business exporting seafood from the United States to China. They earned millions of dollars from this business, which they didn't report on tax forms and laundered into the United States through purchases of real estate and luxury cars. There were also a series of lower-level gifts like covering travel to China and giving them event tickets. In return, she was basically doing the Chinese government's bidding to the extent that her position allowed. She was regularly meeting with Chinese officials and keeping them abreast of her actions.
That's certainly a defense. But, "My actions were totally in the interest of New York State and had nothing to do with the millions of dollars my husband's business earned after meeting with Chinese government officials or the thousands of dollars of gifts and travel compensation I got and didn't include on my ethics report" may not play particularly well with a jury.
The nature of the business environment in China makes it very likely you'll be mixing it up with government officials on a regular basis.
But yeah if those translations are faithful it's pretty clear she was working for the interests of her PRC contacts.
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I agree that if there really exists an financial arrangement whereby money is exchanged for political favor, then that completely changes the nature of her actions. However, the way it's presented in media and in the indictment is as if those actions on her part (such as blocking the meeting) constitute illegal activities in and of themselves, as if she can be convicted for simply being politically chummy with the Chinese, with or without the alleged kickbacks.
The listing of "travel benefits", "tickets to events" and "salted ducks" as instances of kickback is particularly odd. It makes you wonder why they felt the need to appeal to such ambiguious evidence if they had actually solid evidence proving the financial quid pro quo.
That's how indictments (and civil complaints) work. They list a bunch of facts and then allege that the fact pattern means that the person broke the law (or committed a civil wrong). They don't have to include every detail or spell out every implication. They aren't the last word in the evidence that's going to be presented at trial, either. All that's necessary is that they state enough facts that a jury can make a reasonable inference that the alleged acts were violated, and they've done that.
Lol, you're obviously younger than me. Before they cracked down on that sort of thing, event tickets was one of the biggest kickback schemes around. Why do you think corporate luxury boxes became so popular? When I was a kid if there was anything I wanted to go to there was always a chance my uncle (who was a facilities manager for a downtown skyscraper) could get them from a vendor. When I was in high school my friend's dad was in sales and he bought like a dozen tickets to every show at a local concert venue to give to customers. There were always a few shows a year no one wanted tickets to so a whole bunch of us would go. The ethics people started cracking down on that so the new thing became trips. If a vendor wanted to make sales he'd invite his customers to, say, an all-expenses paid hunting trip at a ranch in Wyoming. Ostensibly to talk business. This was soon cracked-down on and most companies started limiting their purchasing agents to gifts under $100, which has been steadily revised downward to the point where anything more than a fruit basket is prohibited. For a while, there was still and old school of purchasing agents who pretty much wouldn't do business with anyone who didn't give kickbacks, and were kind of flummoxed when the new generation of vendors didn't have anything to offer because 90% of their customer base wasn't allowed to accept anything, and the new generation of purchasing agents never knew of a world where that was even conceivable. This wasn't really that long ago (within the past 20 years), so it's understandable that stuff like this is still considered a red flag.
Kind of a shame really, because it's not as though genuine corruption dries up and goes away forever. You can't bribe politicians, but you can hire their children, or donate to their foundations. Maybe someone can make a case that cracking down on gifts is good -- cracking down on explicit bribes is good. But any culture that facilitates gift-giving is personal and human and doing something more than just facilitating efficient market transactions.
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