WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A former U.S. Justice Department employee pleaded guilty on Friday to conspiring to deceive banks about millions of dollars in foreign lobbying funds, after he facilitated the financing of a lobbying campaign related to the U.S. investigation into the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) scandal.
The Justice Department said in a statement that the alleged architect of the 1MDB scheme had hired George Higginbotham, who was then a senior congressional affairs specialist at the Justice Department, to help transfer tens of millions of dollars from foreign bank accounts to the United States.
