Two Men Who Made Large Campaign Contributions Wanted By Ecuador

Roberto and William Isaias

[From article]
two men, Roberto and William Isaias, are fugitives from Ecuador, which has angrily pressed Washington to turn them over, to no avail. A year after their relatives gave $90,000 to help re-elect Mr. Obama, the administration rejected Ecuador’s extradition request for the men, fueling accusations that such donations were helping to keep the brothers and their families safely on American soil.
“The Isaias brothers fled to Miami not to live off their work, something just, but to buy themselves more mansions and Rolls-Royces and to finance American political campaigns,” President Rafael Correa of Ecuador told reporters last month. “That’s what has given them protection,” he added, an allegation the Obama administration and members of Congress reject.
[. . .]
In 2012, the two were sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison in Ecuador in what the government there calls a scheme to run a bank into the ground by making loans to businesses they controlled and then presenting false balance sheets to get bailout funds. Ecuador says it lost more than $400 million, and Interpol issued a “red notice,” or international alert, for the men, though some people familiar with the case said the Isaias brothers had been scapegoated and had little chance of a fair trial at home.
As their legal troubles have mounted, Roberto’s wife; their children, daughter-in-law and nephews; and a few employees have donated at least $320,000 to American political campaigns since 2010, finance records show.
[. . .]
“Employing the finest attorneys their millions allow, the Isaiases have successfully fought deportation for years,” she wrote. She urged the State Department to deport the brothers.
[. . .]
Although only a small portion of the Isaias family’s campaign contributions have been previously reported by the news media, that was enough to put it back on the front pages of its country’s newspapers, 16 years after the bank collapse that sent the family into exile.
The relative anonymity the family once enjoyed in the United States ended in late January when an NBC station reported that Mr. Menendez was under federal investigation for having received donations from the family and having written on its behalf to the Department of Homeland Security.
[. . .]
Mr. Menendez’s office acknowledged sending at least five letters to the Department of Homeland Security for the brothers and other relatives with immigration problems, but described them as among thousands of such letters he has sent.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/world/americas/wanted-by-ecuador-2-brothers-make-mark-in-us-campaigns.html?hp&_r=2

Wanted by Ecuador, 2 Brothers Make Mark in U.S. Campaigns
By FRANCES ROBLES

MARCH 11, 2014