Fugees rapper Pras sentenced to 14 years in prison over illegal donations to Obama campaign

The Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for involvement in a billion-dollar Malaysia scam that funnelled money into US politics.

The 52-year-old founding member of the 1990s hit trio the Fugees was convicted of money laundering and campaign finance violations in 2023 in a global foreign influence scandal led by the Malaysian financier Low Taek Jho.

In April 2023, a federal jury convicted Michel of 10 counts, including conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. The trial in Washington DC included testimony from the actor Leonardo DiCaprio and the former attorney general Jeff Sessions.

Justice department prosecutors said federal sentencing guidelines recommended a life sentence for Michel, who they said “betrayed his country for money” and “lied unapologetically and unrelentingly to carry out his schemes”.

His sentence, they wrote, “should reflect the breadth and depth of his crimes, his indifference to the risks to his country, and the magnitude of his greed”.

The defence attorney Peter Zeidenberg said his client’s 14-year sentence was “completely disproportionate to the offence”. Michel will appeal against his conviction and sentence, according to his lawyer.

Zeidenberg had recommended a three-year prison sentence. A life sentence would be an “absurdly high” punishment for Michel given that it is typically reserved for deadly terrorists and drug cartel leaders, Michel’s attorneys said in a court filing.

“The government’s position is one that would cause Inspector Javert to recoil and, if anything, simply illustrates just how easily the guidelines can be manipulated to produce absurd results, and how poorly equipped they are, at least on this occasion, to determine a fair and just sentence,” they continued.

In the early 2010s, Low – now a fugitive believed to be hiding in China – used billions of dollars stolen from a Malaysian state investment fund known as 1MDB to invest in luxury US real estate, fine art and Hollywood films such as DiCaprio’s The Wolf of Wall Street. Low has maintained his innocence.

Michel was accused of helping Low secretly channel money into then president Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign via shell companies, hiding the donations’ origins.

Michel also tried to end a justice department investigation of Low, tampered with two witnesses and perjured himself at trial, prosecutors said.

Michel, originally from Brooklyn, founded the Fugees with his childhood friends Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean.

The group won two Grammy awards at the peak of their fame in the 1990s and sold tens of millions of albums.

In August 2024, the judge rejected Michel’s request for a new trial based in part on his defence attorney’s use of a generative AI program during his closing of the trial’s arguments. The judges said that and other trial errors did not amount to a serious miscarriage of justice.