http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/ne ... 443050.htm

Posted on Mon, Dec. 19, 2005

Filipino businessman deported over tax, election fraud convictions

BY JAY WEAVER
jweaver@MiamiHerald.com

A Filipino businessman imprisoned for two years on federal tax evasion and election fraud convictions arising from his Miami business activities was deported to his homeland over the weekend, U.S. officials said Monday.

Mark B. Jimenez, 58, used corporate money from two Miami companies to reimburse employees for illegal donations to several top Democrats in the mid-1990s.

Among them: At least $41,500 in illegal contributions to the re-election campaign of then-President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore and to the campaigns of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, and Sen. Robert Toricelli, D-New Jersey.

The donors were employees of Future Tech International Inc., a computer parts distribution business owned by Jimenez, and Mark Vision Computer, another Miami company owned by a relative. Jimenez, who had first come to the United States on a business visa almost two decades ago, fled to the Philippines in 1998 after Clinton was caught up in fund-raising scandals.

Jimenez was elected to the Philippine Congress as a representative of one of Manila's poorest districts -- but was ousted after his extradition in 2002 on federal charges.

The following year, Jimenez pleaded guilty to two counts of tax evasion and one count of conspiracy to commit election finance offenses. In addition to his two-year prison sentence, he was ordered to pay $1.2 million in restitution for unpaid income taxes for the years 1995 and 1996.

In March, an immigration judge ordered his removal to his native country because he is a foreign national convicted of a serious federal crime, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Jimenez departed from Philadelphia and arrived in the Philippines on Sunday.