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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)...

Thursday, October 27, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT Few outside U.N. circles have heard of IHC Services, a private company that for years was one of hundreds of firms selling goods and services to the U.N. As a rule, the U.N. keeps secret most details of these deals. But scandals involving IHC have begun lifting the lid on how the U.N. handles taxpayers' money. The IHC story suggests that the U.N.'s failures of governance are not confined to such special projects as the Oil for Food program. If anything, Oil for Food looks more and more like a large outcropping of...

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...

NEW YORK — The scandal engulfing the United Nations Procurement Department (search) now appears to be bottomless. It also shows signs of growing more sinister, especially where it involves a mysterious private company called IHC Services (search), 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...

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations' Monday announcement that it will look into whether a longtime official violated conflict-of-interest rules did more than draw attention to the man's possible wrongdoing — it also raised questions about how the world body investigates itself. The world body's decision to investigate procurement officer Alexander Yakovlev (search) was prompted by a FOX News investigation into the staffer. Yakovlev, who handles tens of millions of dollars' worth of contracts for a variety of U.N. operations, is entwined in an apparent father-son conflict of interest similar to the one that engulfed Secretary-General Kofi Annan (search) and...