Question:
South Korean indicted in Iraq oil-for-food scandal
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060124/ts_nm/...m4yBHNlYwNmYw--
2 hours, 25 minutes ago
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A South Korean lobbyist was indicted in New York on Monday on charges of scheming with top U.N. 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.
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.
Park is accused of taking more than $2 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 Park met with an unnamed high-ranking U.N. official and an unnamed collaborator now cooperating 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 U.N. resolution establishing the program.
He was later paid by the Iraqi government for his efforts, including $400,000 in cash in May 1996.
The U.N. oil-for-food program began in 1996 to allow
Iraq to sell oil to buy civilian goods for its people living under U.N. sanctions after the 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
The program administered $67 billion worth of oil, and U.S. and U.N. investigations have found that lobbyists and U.N. and Iraqi officials took kickbacks and bribes.
Park was also at the center of the 1970's Koreagate bribery scandal in Washington.
A date of June 20 was previously set for Park's trial.
Answer:
Koreagate was a funny moment for the KCIA.
Answer:
Korean pride yo!
Answer:
*gasp*
