U.S. regulators have hit a Canadian steel tycoon company with one of the largest election-related fines in history for illegally orchestrating $ 1.75 million in donations to a Donald Trump campaign team. Barry Zekelman broke the campaign finance law by helping to direct contributions from Wheatland Tube, a US-based company that controls the Super PAC America First Action in 2018, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) has ruled. In an agreement between the FEC and Mr. Zekelman’s companies, Wheatland will pay a $ 975,000 fine and ask America First to either return the donations or give them to the US Treasury Department. Under U.S. law, it is illegal for foreign nationals to contribute to campaigns or participate in U.S. corporate donation decisions. The fine in Wheatland is the largest ever imposed by the FEC for a foreign national contribution and the third largest overall. Subsidiaries of foreign companies in the US, including Canadian companies, regularly make US political contributions, but rarely encounter problems because it is difficult to prove that their foreign owners were involved in the donation decision. In Mr. Zekelman’s case, he admitted to the New York Times that he had approved the contributions after America First Action asked his company. “They were communicating with our people. ours brought it to me. I said “Great, I would love to find a way to support him,” the paper quoted the newspaper as saying by Mr. Zekelman in a 2019 profile. The Campaign Legal Center, a monitoring team, complained to the FEC based on this comment. The donations came in the midst of a trade war between the United States and Canada, part of Mr. Trump’s protectionist push to help US steel companies block foreign imports. Canadian steel tycoon faces complaint to US regulators over Trump campaign donations Mr Zekelman has been pushing for the Trump administration to impose tariffs on steel in other countries and has also backed sanctions against Canada. In one case in 2018, Mr. Zekelman supported the suppression of foreign imports directly to Mr. Trump during dinner at his hotel in Washington. Mr. Zekelman, originally from Windsor, Ont., Is the owner and CEO of Zekelman Industries. The company has assets on both sides of the border, including its Pennsylvania-based subsidiary Wheatland. The FEC decision is a warning to many other foreign companies that make campaign donations that it is illegal for foreign owners or executives to play any role in the contributions. “The magnitude of this sentence is unprecedented,” Campaign Legal Center Vice President Adav Noti said in an interview. “What the FEC is saying is that there is at least one area of law now that they really monitor and enforce. If you are a Super PAC and receive a foreign corporate contribution, you are taking a significant risk. “ Mr Zekelman did not respond to a request for comment. In an e-mail, US First President Brian Walsh did not say whether the Super PAC would return Wheatland contributions or donate them to the Treasury. He attached a letter from the FEC stating that the committee had decided not to take action against America First over the Wheatland donation. In his response to the regulator, Mr. Zekelman said he discussed the donations with Mickey McNamara, the president of Wheatland, who then decided to proceed with the contributions. Mr Zekelman’s companies have argued that the donations were legal because Mr McNamara, a US citizen, used his “independent judgment” when he decided to cut the checks. The FEC rejected this argument, saying that any participation in a donation decision by a foreigner is illegal. “The key question is not whether a U.S. citizen or citizen had the ultimate decision-making power or the final say in the contribution or donation, but whether any foreign national directed, dictated, controlled, or participated directly or indirectly in a decision. process in relation to election-related expenditure, “the commission wrote in its decision. During Mr. Trump’s presidency, Mr. Zekelman supported government tariffs on China, the European Union, and South Korea, which put Zekelman’s rivals at a disadvantage. Mr Zekelman told CTV Windsor in 2018 that he also backed tariffs on Canadian steel: The levies would hurt his business, Mr Zekelman said, but would push Ottawa to renegotiate the North American free trade agreement. Mr Zekelman has repeatedly called on Canada to make trade concessions to Mr Trump, including agreeing to US demands that Ottawa agree to export quotas to Canadian steel. The Canadian government has reached an agreement in which the US removes tariffs without imposing quotas on Canada. In April 2018, Mr. Zekelman attended a dinner hosted by Mr. Trump with key campaign sponsors in a private suite at the Trump International Hotel in Washington. The conversation was recorded by businessman Igor Fruman and later circulated during the first trial for Mr. Trump’s extradition because it also contained a discussion about the dismissal of the US ambassador to Ukraine. Over lunch, Mr. Zekelman praised Mr. Trump for reducing the amount of South Korean steel exported to the United States by 30%. Mr Zekelmann urged the president to impose similar quotas on other countries in order to “prevent the raw quantity of these inputs”. 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