Nojay fraud trial in Cambodia starts Monday
New York state Assemblyman William R. Nojay, a Pittsford Republican, is one of four defendants about to stand trial for criminal fraud in the southeast Asian country of Cambodia.
Court proceedings are scheduled to begin on the Fourth of July, according to a news report Friday from Phnom Penh.
Nojay, who has become a prominent supporter of presidential contender Donald Trump, told the Democrat and Chronicle Friday that he expects to be exonerated.
Nojay and three other men who formed a company to process and export rice from Cambodia stand accused of obtaining a $1 million investment from a wealthy Cambodian, then shutting the company down. The news report from the Khmer Times said the money was wired to a bank account controlled by Nojay but never invested in the company, Akra Agricultural Partners.
One of Nojay's co-defendants is Sichan Siv, a prominent native of Cambodia who grew up in this country and became a White House aide and the United States ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush.
The prosecutor in the case said Akra Agricultural Partners was an empty shell and the endeavor was a fraud, according to the Khmer Times story.
Lawyers for the defendants, however, have consistently denied the allegations and call the case a simple business deal gone bad.
Nojay said the court session Monday will consider a defendants' motion to dismiss the charges.
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The criminal case went to trial a year ago but was put on hold when the presiding judge decreed that more investigation was needed.
Since that time, Nojay asserted Friday, the defendants have obtained evidence of alleged corruption involving the investor who claims to have been victimized, Eng Lykuong.
"We have found records that she (Lykuong) bribed the original judge and he has been removed from the bench, his clerk was arrested for corruption and his personal assistant has fled into the countryside," Nojay said.
Whether the defendants' counter-allegations make any difference in the outcome of their case remains to be seen, though numerous articles do describe the court system in Cambodia as quite corrupt.
As was the case in the first trial last year, Nojay will not make an appearance in the Phnom Penh courtroom next week. He and two other defendants who are Americans are being tried in absentia. The fourth defendant, a Cambodian-American, is expected to be present.
Should Nojay be convicted, it is not clear what sort of sentence might be imposed or how it could be enforced. The United States has no extradition treaty with Cambodia, according to a document posted by the State Department.
The Cambodian case is not the only legal entanglement in which the assemblyman has found himself. As the Democrat and Chronicle reported in May, Nojay is a co-defendant in a $9.75 million civil fraud suit in Pennsylvania that revolves around promised investments in an animal-feed company and has a judgment for nearly $1 million filed against him in relation to another feed company.
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Those cases were included in a Democrat and Chronicle investigative package that highlighted other unusual business dealings by the Pittsford Republican, including his little-known involvement in a company that sought a lucrative contract in the Rochester school modernization program and his use of a Florida company to perform work on behalf of Democrat Lovely Warren when she ran for Rochester mayor in 2013.