Free Republic

Russia's Foreign Ministry said Saturday that it was disappointed with a U.S. court decision to sentence a former Russian diplomat to the U.N. to prison for money laundering and fraud. The ministry said in a statement that it would consider demanding Vladimir Kuznetsov be returned to Russia. The former diplomat, who once chaired the United Nations' powerful budget oversight committee, was sentenced Friday to four years and three months in prison by a U.S. district court after being found guilty in March of laundering money from foreign companies seeking U.N. contracts. He was also ordered to pay a $73,000 (€51,500)...

NEW YORK — The scandal engulfing the United Nations Procurement Department () now appears to be bottomless. It also shows signs of growing more sinister, especially where it involves a mysterious private company called IHC Services (), which did big business with the procurement department until it was removed from U.N. rosters in June. New details of how dark the scandal could prove to be have emerged from the private sale of IHC on June 3, 2005, just as the procurement scandal was about to break. It now appears that while doing business with the U.N., IHC had links both to Saddam...