Tongsun Park
Posted on 01/23/2006 5:51:25 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
A SOUTH Korean lobbyist has been indicted in New York on charges of scheming with top UN and Iraqi officials to defraud the now-defunct oil-for-food program.
Tongsun Park, 70, was indicted by a federal grand jury in Manhattan on charges including conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's former government and money laundering.
Mr Park was added to a previous indictment that now names 12 defendants, including Texas oil tycoon Oscar Wyatt, David Chalmers of Bayoil Inc, Bulgarian oil trader Ludmil Dionissiev and two Swiss executives and their companies.
Mr Park is accused of taking more than $US2 million ($2.66 million) in Iraqi payoffs while secretly lobbying on behalf of Hussein's government. He was arrested on January 6 in Houston and has remained in jail pending a decision on his bail, set to be considered at a hearing on Thursday.
The indictment said that in 1993 Mr Park met an unnamed high-ranking UN official and an unnamed collaborator now co-operating with the investigation to set terms for getting business under the oil-for-food program.
That meeting and a second meeting in Geneva that included two Iraqi officials were said to influence the 1995 UN resolution establishing the program.
He was later paid by the Iraqi government for his efforts, including $US400,000 in cash in May 1996.
The UN oil-for-food program began in 1996 to allow Iraq to sell oil to buy civilian goods for its people living under UN sanctions after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
The program administered $US67 billion worth of oil, and US and UN investigations have found that lobbyists and UN and Iraqi officials took kickbacks and bribes.
Mr Park was also at the centre of the 1970's "Koreagate" bribery scandal in Washington.
A date of June 20 was previously set for his trial.
All very good, but when will Kofi be charged?
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Yes, when will the horribly corrupt at the U.N. not only be held accountable, but thrown out of the USA on principle? We keep hearing ALL ABOUT PRINCIPLE from Washington, but when it comes to DELIVERING, nothing ever happens -- what does that say about Washington, and the near-useless pols that inhabit it???
"Yes, when will the horribly corrupt at the U.N. not only be held accountable, but thrown out of the USA on principle?"
I say move it to Syria or Somalia. They would get just as much accomplished.
Perhaps this is the same Tongsun Parks that was involved in questionable gifts to then Louisiana Congressman Edwin Edwards who was later elected governor of Louisiana. He (Edwards) never learned and is now serving the remainder of a 10 year sentence in federal prison for selling casino licenses in Louisiana during and after his last term as governor.
Tongsun Park
Edwin Edwards was one of many that Tongsun Park conducted illicit business with. He was quite the social big name in Washington during much of the seventies. A lot of big names were in his circle of friends, because, well because it paid handsomely. He was a cofounder of the Georgetown Club, a private eating and drinking establishment where the high rollers and crooks (sometimes one and the same) hung out.
Thanks for posting this information. BTTT!
" what does that say about Washington, and the near-useless pols that inhabit it???"
it must be the "keep your friends close, and your enemies closer" type thingy
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