Leonardo DiCaprio will soon be part of a money laundering trial. The actor will be among 72 witnesses for former Fugees member Prakazrel ‘Pras’ Michel’s case.
In 2019, one of the founding members of the 1990s hip-hop group Michel was charged in a campaign finance conspiracy during the 2012 US presidential election.
A four-count indictment accused Michel of conspiring with fugitive Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho to create and conceal foreign campaign contributions. He is alleged to have used straw donors to give campaign contributions to a US presidential candidate, who is not named in the case but is being referred to as Candidate A.
Leonardo DiCaprio features in a list of witnesses that the US Department of Justice has created related to the case.
Michel is faced with a separate civil forfeiture complaint accusing him of a scheme to try to get the department to drop an investigation into embezzlement from a Malaysian investment fund. The rapper has denied any wrongdoing in that case.
The embezzlement from the fund, known as 1MDB, has become a political scandal in Malaysia.
The money was allegedly used to pay for jewellery and luxury art and even helped finance several Hollywood films including ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’.
In 2018, the Justice Department announced charges against Jho Low and two former Goldman Sachs bankers in a money laundering and bribery scheme that pilfered money from the fund, created to spur economic development projects in that country.
Other witnesses listed for trial include former White House chief of staff John Kelly, former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger, casino mogul Steven Wynn, and more out of the 72 participants.