Posted on 05/22/2007 8:56:59 AM PDT by Calpernia
A prosecutor told a jury on Monday that a former United Nations procurement official charged with bribery was a greedy and deceitful diplomat who exchanged nearly $100 million in contracts for a sweetheart deal on a luxury apartment and cash.
Deputy U.S. Attorney Cathy Seibel promised the jury in her opening statement that the government would prove through more than 20 witnesses and hundreds of documents that Sanjaya Bahel secretly helped a Florida friend secure lucrative contracts from 1999 to 2003.
She said the friend, Nishan Kohli, of Miami, agreed that his family's businesses would kick back 10 percent of his profits to Bahel if he smoothed the way for them to win contacts to supply the United Nations with everything from laptop computers to engineers.
Seibel said Kohli provided Bahel a severely discounted Manhattan apartment, a laptop computer, plane tickets for him and his wife and a few thousand dollars in envelopes every month or so.
In return, Bahel, 57, provided a "secret-fact channel'' that included advance word of bidding opportunities, suggestions to make bids stronger and advice on how to improve their odds of winning, the prosecutor said.
To smooth communication and hide the secret arrangement, Bahel made hundreds of calls on a cell phone the Kohli family provided him, Seibel said.
She promised jurors a "picture of greed and deceit'' would emerge as they study evidence showing the Kohli family enabled Bahel to rent at a steep discount and later buy two midtown apartments at a price so low that the building's board questioned it.
Bahel's lawyer, Richard Herman, said the government had it wrong.
"Mr. Bahel is only guilty of staying friends with the Kohlis,'' he said. "He's guilty of remaining friends with people who went bad.''
Herman said it was impossible for Bahel to give a contract to anyone and added that his client had never opened a sealed bid himself.
"At no time did he intend to commit any harm to the United Nations,'' he said.
Herman said Bahel saved the United Nations more than $20 million through his hard work.
He said Bahel worked various financial jobs for the government of India before he became a United Nations delegate from there in 1994. Bahel joined the U.N. procurement office a year later and served as chief of the U.N.'s Commodity Procurement Section from 1999 to 2003.
By early 2003, he had left the office and taken a position as chief of the Commercial Activities Service in the U.N. Postal Administration. He was fired in December, a month after his arrest.
Kohli has pleaded guilty to a bribery charge and is scheduled to testify against Bahel. He could face up to 10 years in prison.
Bahel faces charges of accepting corrupt payments, mail fraud and wire fraud, which could carry a penalty of more than 10 years in prison if he is convicted.
During his plea, Kohli said he let Bahel rent an apartment below market price and later buy it for far below market value, efforts that "were intended to influence him in return for promises of help.''
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