R&B/Hip-Hop

How did Fugees member Pras Michél go from being a former member of one of the most beloved hip-hop trios of the 1990s to facing two decades in prison? Slowly, then, it seems, all at once. In a new interview with Variety magazine — his first since a jury convicted him on 10 counts last April in an illegal lobbying case — the 52-year-old MC described his entanglement in one of the world’s largest-ever financial scandals.

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“I don’t know if subconsciously it was a bit exciting for me too. I like spy movies, but I never wanted to be a spy,” said Michél about his role in an influence peddling scandal that wound up with him convicted on charges of violating campaign finance laws during President Obama’s 2012 re-election bid, as well as illegally lobbying the Trump administration in 2017; Michél is facing up to 22 years in federal prison at his January sentencing hearing.

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“I don’t think that’s sexy. But a part of it felt like that,” he said.

The article opens with a spy novel-worthy scene — based on firsthand accounts and court documents — in which the rapper is ordered to go to the front desk of the Four Seasons hotel in Manhattan and used the phrase “banana peel.” That secret message prompted a concierge to hand him an envelope with orders to circle the block twice and await further instructions.

According to the scenario laid out in court, Michél then returned and was ushered into an elevator reserved just for visiting dignitaries facing possible assassination risks on his way to a penthouse suite, where a high-ranking Chinese official booted up an email from then Attorney General Jeff Sessions about three American hostages being held in Chinese prisons. After discussing one prisoner, who was pregnant, the man made a call and moments later showed Michél the itinerary for the woman who was to be flown back to the U.S.

A week after that meeting, federal agents swooped in on Michél, claiming that he was involved in a massive financial scandal that resulted in the siphoning of $4.5 billion from the Malaysian sovereign wealth fun referred to as 1MDB, with the U.S. government tagging the rapper as a Chinese spy.

Recalling the oddity of the hotel meeting, Michél said he noticed a red flag that night in the form of the secret elevator, which, even as a celebrity used to some necessary cloak-and-dagger maneuvers, he was not familiar with.

“I’m going to tell you what was weird to me: the fact that the Four Seasons has a private elevator. I never knew that,” said Michél, who was first charged in the case in 2019. He was accused of funneling money from fugitive Malaysian financier Jho Low through straw donors to Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, a well as trying to help scuttle a Justice Department investigation into an extradition case on behalf of China during Trump’s first term. “They have a private elevator for just certain people. But my life leading up to that point felt surreal, so part of that night felt natural,” he said.

Michél was convicted in April on counts including conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government in the long-running investigation and trial that featured testimony for the prosecution by stars including Leonardo DiCaprio and name-drops of Kim Kardashian and Martin Scorsese during testimony. In January, Michél’s former attorney, David Kenner, plead guilty to criminal contempt charges over allegations that he leaked grand jury materials to reporters ahead of the trial.

Low, a free-spending financier who backed the 2013 Scorsese-DiCaprio movie The Wolf of Wall Street, became the toast of Hollywood for a time, with many celebrities partying on his private jet and accepting lavish gifts from the still-missing businessman whom Michél met at a 2006 party after a promoter introduced them. Prosectors said that Low later offered Obama fundraiser Michél $20 million for a photo with the President, money Michél accepted and kept most of, assuming, he said, that was how the rich go about meeting famous people.

Facing decades in federal prison, Yale-educated Michél told the magazine, “technically, I’m a foreign agent.” He said he was never friends with Low, but he connected the businessman to other VIPs and, to date, the rapper is the only in Low’s orbit who has faced serious consequences in the fall-out from the scandal. “The government needed a prize. They needed a head, and he was the low-hanging fruit,” said one of Michél’s attorneys, Robert Meloni.

For his part, Michél — who reportedly had nearly $80 million seized by the U.S. government as part of their sanctions, with prosecutors claiming he pulled in more than $100 million from his dealings with Low — told Variety that he’s going to fight and appeal his sentence, but realizes he might end up behind bars either way. “There’s a possibility that I’m going in while I’m fighting,” he said. “It’s just the reality.” He added that as he awaits his fate, “every aspect of my life has been disrupted. I can’t bank anywhere, been kicked out of 13 banks… Without getting too philosophical about it, it was about me being at the right place at the wrong time. Or the wrong place at the right time.”

Given the cinematic scope of the story, Variety reported that there are at least three books on the subject in the works, with Idris Elba in talks with Michél’s reps about acquiring his life rights and an upcoming documentary about the rapper’s part in the scandal. Director Ben Patterson showed some footage from the in-process doc during a secret screening at the Toronto Film Festival in September, reportedly to stunned silence from the audience. Some of the footage was reportedly shot by Michél, who kept his camera rolling during a meeting with Chinese Communist Party official Lijun Sun — who was sentenced to death in 2022 for taking bribes — during that fateful hotel room meeting.

In the end, Michél said he’s been abandoned by publicists, friends and, without naming names, seemingly his former Fugees bandmates LaurynHill and Wyclef Jean. “I’m done with that. They’re going to Europe [to tour]. I can’t go,” he said of the bail conditions that prevent him from leaving the U.S.

“It’s what it is. You can’t give people that kind of energy. So you could be frustrated, you could be disappointed, but I really believe in my path and in my journey, and I believe what’s mine, no one’s going to be able to take it away from me,” he said. “So it’s better that you have a small group of people who really believe in you and believe in what you’re doing than to have 100 people around you, and the minute something happens — boom. People just disappear.”

In the meantime, Michél filed a strongly worded lawsuit against Hill in October, claiming she defrauded him over proceeds from the group’s foreshortened 2023 reunion tour and that her “gross mismanagement” led to the abrupt cancellation of their planned follow-up 2024 tour; Hill responded, calling the lawsuit “baseless” and “full of false claims and unwarranted attacks.”