Scandal ties turn up at Tucker's new job
NOEL E. OMAN
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
Jim Guy Tucker may be a half a world away these days, but it's never far enough from Whitewater.
The former Arkansas governor is in Jakarta, Indonesia, to help run a cable TV company -- a not-unlikely role since he and his wife, Betty, have nearly 20 years of experience in the business.
The cable company, however, is controlled by the family of James Riady, the Indonesian businessman, friend of President Clinton's and prominent figure in some of the scandals that have dogged the president.
Riady has been linked to a fund-raising scandal concerning foreign donations to Clinton's 1996 re-election campaign. In addition, his family's financial conglomerate, the Lippo Group, paid longtime Clinton friend Webb Hubbell -- a former Little Rock lawyer and associate U.S. attorney general -- a $100,000 consulting fee while Hubbell was under criminal investigation.
Riady's family has supported Clinton's campaigns dating to his years as Arkansas governor, when Lippo held an interest in the former Worthen Bank in Little Rock. When the Riadys lived in Little Rock, they became acquainted with Clinton and other Arkansans, including Tucker.
Tucker confirmed that he started helping run the Jakarta cable company in March 1999, when he was cooperating with Whitewater prosecutors. Two months later, he was sentenced in the second of two convictions (cont)
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