Rdtf
CNO
Joined: 13 May 2004
Posts: 2209
Location: BUSHville
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 Posted: Thu Apr 14, 2005 2:52 pm Post subject: 3 incl. a Texan Indicted in U.N. Oil-for-Food Scandal |
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http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,153452,00.html
| Quote: | 3 Indicted in U.N. Oil-for-Food Scandal
Thursday, April 14, 2005
David Chalmers (search), head of Texas-based Bayoil (search), which participated in oil deals through the program, is the American who will be indicted. A Bulgarian and a British citizen also will be slapped with charges involving an alleged scheme to pay millions of dollars in secret kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq as part of Oil-for-Food program, federal prosecutors said Thursday.
U.S. Attorney David N. Kelley scheduled a 10:30 a.m. EDT news conference Thursday with an FBI official to announce the unsealing of the indictment.
The kickbacks involved funds otherwise intended for humanitarian relief, Kelley said in a statement.
In addition, Kelley was to unseal a criminal complaint that charges a South Korean citizen with conspiracy to act in the United States as an unregistered government agent for the Iraqi government's effort to create the Oil-for-Food program, the statement said.
On Jan. 18, an Iraqi-born American businessman accused of skimming money from the oil-for-food program pleaded guilty in New York to being an illegal agent of Saddam Hussein's government. Samir A. Vincent (search), 64, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Annandale, Va., was the first person to be charged in the Justice Department's investigation of the program.
Former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker (search), who heads the Independent Inquiry Committee investigation probing the Oil-for-Food program, expects to release the third of his reports on the issue this summer. It will likely lead to dozens of criminal prosecutions by legal authorities in various countries for bribery, sanctions busting, money laundering and fraud, officials told The Associated Press last month.
After two interim reports focusing on key U.N. figures, the investigation is tackling broader issues, including the Security Council's oversight of the $64 billion Oil-for-Food program and Saddam's attempts to use it to enrich himself and win political influence.
Volcker has said the final report will address the capability of the United Nations to manage large humanitarian programs "and who ought to do it."
The report will also look into whether Iraqi oil contracts were awarded to Security Council countries in an attempt to influence council decisions on Iraq, and whether banks inside and outside Iraq may have helped facilitate corruption, investigators said.
Volcker has said he hopes his final report will bring closure to allegations of massive corruption in the program by estimating how much money Saddam illegally pocketed.
He said there's no evidence it reached $21 billion as a U.S. Senate subcommittee estimated. Volcker said he expects it will be more like the $11 billion in a CIA report, or the $10 billion in a U.S. General Accounting Office report — most from oil smuggling.
FOX News' Jonathan Hunt and The Associated Press contributed to t
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