The vice president has said he had no knowledge of the $55,000 in illicit contributions to the Democratic Party collected from donors at the temple.

Another important prospective witness, Yah Lin Trie, known as Charlie Trie, who has been accused of illicit contributions, has left the country and so is out of range of the investigators.

In addition, the leader is accused of hitting up constituents for illicit contributions, of using government employees and resources for his own purposes and even of sending operatives out to threaten people.

"How do you explain that for 20 years, when everyone knew that the system was run on illicit contributions, that there was not a single inquiry, not a single trial?"

Paolo Berlusconi was sentenced in Milan after magistrates found him guilty of paying illicit contributions worth $90,000 to the Christian Democrats, the now-defunct party that long dominated Italian politics.

If anything, those gains appear to have been undermined by the onslaught of investigations and publicity surrounding China's possible role in funneling illicit contributions to members of Congress.

After Mr. Lake left the firm where he worked when the illicit contributions were made, he was offered a position as managing director of the Washington office of Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm.

Mr. Barbour insists that it was an independent research institute that had transacted a legal commercial loan deal, not an illicit foreign contribution for the Republican Party.

In other words, the money received was not a bribe but merely an illicit contribution to the reinforcement of the Christian Democratic party.

Four years ago, Mr. Lambsdorff became the most prominent victim of the scandal over revelations of illicit political contributions by the giant Flick corporation.