A former Republican congressman and an Illinois man pleaded guilty Wednesday in federal court in Kansas City to acting as unregistered foreign agents while representing a foreign charity before the U.S. government.
Mark Deli Siljander, who once represented Michigan in the U.S. House, and Abdel Azim Elsiddig, a part-time fundraiser for the former Islamic American Relief Agency in Columbia, Mo., each acknowledged they conspired to lobby for the Sudan-based Islamic African Relief Agency.
In separate plea hearings, each man admitted that he was required to register with the Justice Department before representing the Sudanese charity.
Siljander, 59, also pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for lying to FBI agents and prosecutors about the purpose of the lobbying funds. At the time, he described the $75,000 payments as charitable contributions for a book he was writing.
In October 2004, the Treasury Department declared the Sudanese charity and its Columbia office as supporters of international terrorism and froze their assets in the U.S.
“A former congressman engaged in illegal lobbying for a charity suspected of funding international terrorism,” U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips said in a written statement. “Siljander repeatedly lied to FBI agents and prosecutors investigating serious crimes related to national security.”
Elsiddig, 53, acknowledged that he hired and paid Siljander to persuade government officials to remove the charity from a Senate Finance Committee list of Islamic organizations suspected of supporting terrorism and to restore the charity’s ability to receive U.S. government contracts.
Lance Sandage, a lawyer for Siljander, noted afterward that the government dropped conspiracy and money-laundering charges in return for his client’s pleas.
Jean Paul Bradshaw, representing Elsiddig, said, “The plea today was related to a technical violation of a regulatory act and we’ve accepted our responsibility for that.”
In June, Mubarak Hamed, who directed the charity’s Columbia office, pleaded guilty to sending more than $1 million to Iraq in violation of U.S. sanctions. Hamed also acknowledged, after years of denials, that the Columbia charity was part of the Sudanese charity.
Siljander and Elsiddig were the last of the defendants in the case to plead guilty.
