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South Korean arrested in Iraq oil-for-food scandal
(Reuters)
Updated: 2006-01-07 11:05
U.S. authorities arrested a South Korean lobbyist accused of secretly
scheming with top U.N. and Iraqi officials to create the oil-for-food program
that turned into a multibillion-dollar scandal.
Tongsun Park was arrested in Houston on Friday on accusations of acting as an
unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's former government among others charges,
amending original charges filed against him last April.
Park received at least $2 million in cash from Iraq to influence the United
Nations' shaping of the now-defunct oil-for-food program, the U.S. attorney's
office in New York said in a statement.
Much of that money was delivered in diplomatic pouches and it was understood
he would use some to "take care" of an unnamed, high-ranking U.N. official, the
statement said.
Park was also at the center of the 1970s "Koreagate" bribery scandal in
Washington. His defense lawyer was not immediately available for comment.
"Saddam Hussein's government paid off Tongsun Park to corrupt the
oil-for-food program from its inception," U.S. Attorney Michael Garcia said in a
statement.
The other charges are conspiring to commit wire fraud and to launder criminal
proceeds.
"Park actively lobbied U.N. officials to establish the program, while
extracting millions of dollars from profiteering Iraqi officials," the FBI chief
in New York, Mark Mershon, said in the statement. Mershon called the
oil-for-food program "a cash cow masquerading as humanitarian aid."
The U.S. authorities say Park met in 1993 with the high-ranking U.N. official
at his Manhattan apartment to set the terms of the program. That meeting
included an unnamed collaborator who is now cooperating with the investigation.
They also allegedly held a second meeting in Geneva that included two Iraqi
officials. Both meetings were said to influence the 1995 U.N. resolution
establishing the program.
The $67 billion, oil-for-food program allowed Iraq to sell oil to buy
civilian goods for its people living under U.N. sanctions. It began in 1996 and
ended after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
Saddam diverted some $1.8 billion in kickbacks and surcharges paid by more
than 2,000 firms involved in the scheme, according to a U.N.-established
Independent Inquiry Committee led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul
Volcker.
Several defendants are facing criminal charges in federal court in New York
in connection with the program.
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