Giuliani associate Igor Fruman pleads guilty to soliciting foreign campaign contributions

An ally of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani pleaded guilty Friday to a charge he broke campaign finance laws by soliciting an illegal foreign campaign donation as he tried to build a domestic marijuana business.

Igor Fruman, 56, who helped Giuliani dig up dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine, agreed to a plea with prosecutors but the deal doesn’t require him to dish information to prosecutors in other probes, including any investigation into the former personal lawyer for ex-President Donald Trump.

“Mr. Fruman is not cooperating with the government and has determined that this is the fairest and best way to put the past two years of his life behind him,” Fruman’s lawyer Todd Blanche told the Associated Press in a statement.

“He intends to continue to work hard, as he has his entire life, and raise his family in this country that he loved,” he went on. “We will not have any further public communications.”

Fruman helped Giuliani dig up dirt on Joe Biden in Ukraine.REUTERS/Go Nakamura

Prosecutors charged Fruman alongside Lev Parnas and two others in October 2019, alleging they conspired to violate the ban on foreign election donations.

Fruman, who was born in Belarus, faced a slew of accusations, but ultimately pleaded guilty to one county of solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national, according to the AP.

Parnas and Andrey Kukushkin have pleaded not guilty and are set to head to trial next month. Defendant David Correia pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge and was sentenced to a year in prison, Reuters said.

Fruman admitted he sent a list to a Russian businessman of officials in states where he wanted to operate his recreational weed-distribution business.

“At that time, I had little experience in the rules surrounding political donations,” Fruman said, according to Reuters. “But I generally understood that foreign nationals and individuals who are not American citizens were not allowed to make donations in the United States.”

Fruman didn’t plead guilty to charges that he orchestrated illegal donations while trying to push an investigation into Biden’s son Hunter in Ukraine, the AP stated.

Giuliani hasn’t been charged in relation to the case, but federal agents raided the former Big Apple mayor’s office and home earlier this year as part of an ongoing probe.

Federal sentencing guidelines suggest between three and four years in prison for Fruman, but the judge is not bound by those guidelines.

Fruman is scheduled to be sentenced Jan. 21.

With Post wires.

Source: NYPOST

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