Saipan and Northern Mariana Islands
Choctaw Gambling
In early 1995, Abramoff began his lobbying career by reprsenting Native American tribes with their gambling interests. The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Native Americans were one of his firsts. His first act of business was to defeat a Congressional bill to tax Native American casinos that was backed by two seperate Republican senators.
Michael Scanlon and Abramoff persuaded four newly wealthy Indian gaming tribes to pay their firms more than $45 million over a course of three years for lobbying and public affairs work, a sum that rivals spending to influence public policy by some of the nation's biggest corporate interests.
In conjunction with DeLay and his staffers, Abramoff and his law firm were paid a minimum of $6.7 million dollars by the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands from 1995-2001 in exchange for crafting policy that extended exemption from federal immigration and labor laws to the islands' industries. This enabled products to enter the United States with the "Made in the USA" label while not being subjected to U.S. labor and minimum wage laws.
Jack was lobbying Congres against the reform that Clinton was pushing through ... and won. With DeLay standing in Congres on Clinton's side of the reform, lining his pockets from Abramoff's efforts against. There is also rumor that there were forced abortions during this time by the women in Saipan and the Northern Mariana Islands, having to make a choice between working and having a child.
In 1999, eLottery hired Abramoff to block the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act, which he did by enlisting Reed, Norquisst, and DeLay's former chief of staff, Tony Rudy.
Future emails show that Abramoff passed checks from eLottery to several companies including: Lou Sheldon's Traditional Values Coalition and to Norquist's Americans for TaxReform, in route to Reed's company Centery Stategies.
Executives of Naftasib, a Russian energy company, funneled almost $3.4 million to Abramoff and DeLay advisor Ed Buckham between 1997 and 2005. About $60,000 was spent on a trip to Russia in 1997 for Tom DeLay, Buckham, and Abramoff.
In 1998, $1 million was sent to Buckham via his organization U.S. Family Network to influence DeLay's vote in 1998 on legislation that helped make it possible for the International Monetary Fund to bail out the faltering Russian economy.
DeLay voted for the legislation. The money was funneled through the Dutch company Voor Huisen, the Bahamas company Chelsea Enterprises, and the London law firm James & Sarch Co.
eLottery
Naftasib
Seattle Based Lobbying
In December of 1994, Jack was hired as a lobbyist at Preston Gates Ellis & Rosuvelas Meeds, LLP. The traditionally Democratic-leaning firm hired Abramoff for the specific purpose of attaining these missing ties to the Republicans.