Pras Michel, a founding member of Fugees, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for his involvement in a billion-dollar Malaysian money laundering scheme.
The case in question centred around disgraced business mogul Jho Low, real name Low Taek Jho, who was accused of embezzling $4.5billion from the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) sovereign wealth fund. Low has denied all accusations and maintains his innocence.
According to outlets including Billboard and Consequence, Michel allegedly worked on his behalf, and deliberately failed to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. He was also accused of pouring huge sums of money into the presidential administrations of both Barack Obama and Donald Trump in an attempt to influence them.
These allegedly included putting millions into Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign through straw donors, and by lobbying Donald Trump’s administration to bring the DOJ’s investigation into the 1MDB scandal to a halt, according to Consequence. In return, Pras was allegedly paid millions of dollars.
In April 2023, the musician was found guilty on 10 federal counts including witness tampering, money laundering, lying to banks, illegal lobbying, and campaign finance violations.
It is widely reported that he rejected a deal that would have seen him spend just 16 months in prison and have the government return some of the money seized from his accounts.
This deal would have required him to plead guilty to obstruction of justice and a lesser violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Instead, Pras turned down the offer and demanded that the full amount of the money seized from the government from his accounts be returned to him.
He has now been sentenced to 14 years in prison for his involvement in the money laundering and foreign influence scheme. He is also required to forfeit over $64million as part of the sentence, and has three years probation.
The legal issues led to Fugees having to cancel their 2021 reunion tour, although they did play a few gigs together in 2023.
The 1MDB scandal was one of the biggest cases of financial fraud in history, and centered on a state-owned investment fund initiated by former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak in 2009. He was jailed in 2020 for absorbing US$756million from the fund into his personal bank accounts.
Low was alleged to be the mastermind behind the financial scandal, despite never holding an official position in the company, and allegedly used some of the money he stole to fund Martin Scorsese’s 2013 film The Wolf of Wall Street.
Michel’s trial included testimony from Leonardo DiCaprio, who played the lead role in the Scorsese film. The actor claimed that Low used some of the money to both help make the 2013 movie and get more influence in Hollywood.