The Oil-for-Food Scandal – the Canadian Connection

[fourhorses]

Rosett's Notebook: On-going reports from the trial Oil-For-Food


reporter’s notebook:

About that UN Mystery Official #2...

06/30 11:33 AM

... the one who issued a public statement regarding Oil-for-Food on April 18, 2005 saying “I cannot recall a single instance in which I had any contact or discussion on this program with any of the officials responsible.” (see below copy of Maurice Strong’s full statement).

Oil-for-Food has been a puzzle so absorbing, once you get a taste for it, that I have sometimes thought someone ought to make a board game out of it (you’d need a very big board). When the feds issued their initial complaint last year against Tongsun Park, one of the more intriguing riddles involved the identities of two mystery figures described in the narrative only as “high-ranking UN Official #1” and “high-ranking UN Official #2.”

Their names were quickly guessed, but it was not until the state’s cooperating witness Samir Vincent took the stand this week that we had official confirmation. Official #1 was Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who during the formative years of Oil-for-Food, from 1992-1996, also held the title of Secretary-General of the U.N.

Official #2 was longtime U.N. eminence Maurice Strong, a Canadian sometimes dubbed an “international man of mystery,” who for decades has traveled and worked in high U.N. circles. And in 1996 — the year that Oil-for-Food finally came together — Strong worked both at the World Bank and as an top adviser to Boutros-Ghali at the U.N. Strong was then snapped up in early 1997 by the newly promoted Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and put to work as the chief architect of the first sweeping round of Annan’s endless revolutions of reform. Strong was kept on as a top adviser by Annan until 2005, stepping aside shortly after it became apparent that he was the “UN Official #2” mentioned in the Park complaint. It turned out — by-the-by— that Strong had also been employing as his U.N. office assistant his own stepdaughter, Kristina Mayo, without declaring the relationship to the U.N.

Among other things, Strong’s 1997 reform plan consolidated the administration of the ad hoc new Oil-for-Food program into a single, entrenched office in the UN Secretariat, which Annan then entrusted to Benon Sevan — since alleged by Volcker to have taken payoffs from Saddam (Sevan, when last seen, this spring, living on full U.N. pension in a penthouse apartment on Cyprus, said he was innocent).

During that same first year of Kofi Annan’s reign, 1997, which was also the first full year of Oil-for-Food, Maurice Strong received a check from Tongsun Park for $988,885, which according to Paul Volcker’s U.N.-authorized inquiry was bankrolled by Saddam. When Volcker’s investigators asked Strong last year about this six-figure check, Strong at first said he did not remember it. When Volcker’s investigators then waved a copy under his nose, complete with his own signature, Strong recovered his memory, but said it was payment for a normal commercial investment that Park had wished to make in a Strong family oil company, and that he had not known the money came from Saddam. Volcker commented wryly in his September, 2005 report that the U.N. needed a “more rigorous disclosure process for conflicts of interest,” but let Strong off with just that rap on the knuckles. (For more on this, here’s a link to ”Strong Implications” from NRO this past January.)

We may learn more about all this at the trial very soon, possibly even today, as the prosecutors work their way toward that $988,885 check, produced by Park after traveling to Baghdad and then driving out to Jordan with $1 million cash in a cardboard box, according to the Volcker version.

For now, I am trying to square Maurice Strong’s 2005 denial of any contact with “any of the officials responsible” for Oil-for-Food with testimony from state’s witness Samir Vincent on Thursday, in which Vincent described a lunch meeting at a Chinese restaurant near the U.N.. This lunch took place in late 1996. At the time, Oil-for-Food was just getting underway, and according to Vincent, the Iraqis had decided not to bother paying Tongsun Park millions of dollars promised to him earlier that year. Park was “very unhappy,” according to Vincent’s testimony, and arranged a high-powered lunch, in a private room, to which he invited three others: Samir Vincent; Iraq’s then-ambassador to the U.N., Nizar Hamdoon; and one of Park’s high-powered friends at the U.N., Maurice Strong, who dropped by for about 45 minutes to exchange pleasantries, but having put in an appearance, left before the lunch was over.

Vincent testified Thursday that after Strong left the lunch, Tongsun Park turned to Iraq’s ambassador Hamdoon and “told him now you see my commitment, now you see why I need Iraq to keep their commitment to me and to continue what they promised to do.”

http://rosett.nationalreview.com/

[fourhorses]

Rosett's Notebook: On-going reports from the trial Oil-For-Food



reporter’s notebook:

THE "HARROWING EPISODE"

06/30/06 09:02 PM


For a sample of what the jury is now trying to decipher, there is the following tale, as told Thursday to the jury by cooperating government witness Samir Vincent (The defense has not yet had an opportunity to cross-examine Vincent):

In early 1996, about 10 months before Oil-for-Food finally rose from the vat as a living U.N. program, Tongsun Park allegedly asked Vincent for $10 million from Iraq to take care of his "expenses" and his "people." Vincent relayed this to his contact and friend, the then-ambassador of Iraq to the U.N. in New York, Nizar Hamdoon.

Asking, "Why don't we make some money?" Hamdoon suggested a different arrangement: Instead of asking Baghdad to bankroll $10 million for Park, Vincent and Hamdoon should ask for $15 million, give $5 million to Park and keep the remaining $10 million for themselves.

In short order, Hamdoon reported to Vincent that Iraq had approved the request. Vincent set off immediately for Baghdad, making arrangements to transfer the expected $15 million to offshore accounts. When he arrived in Baghdad, all seemed well. He was received with smiles and tea by Iraqi Oil Minister Amir Rashid, and invited to compose contracts spelling out the arrangements for the $5 million and $10 million payments, which Rashid signed.

Vincent went off to visit with some friends he had in Baghdad, excited about prospects for further business in Iraq. Then he went back to his hotel and took a nap.

Later that day, to his surprise, he was summoned back to the oil ministry. The minister, Rashid, escorted Vincent into a conference room where there was a canvas bag on the floor, full of money, and told Vincent to empty his briefcase.

"I emptied my briefcase."

A secretary then reached into the canvas bag, pulling out $10,000 bundles of $100 bills. The secretary counted out $450,000, which Vincent was told to put in his briefcase.

Prosecutor: "And were you able to fit $450,000 in cash into your briefcase?"

Vincent: "Very difficult, because I had a small briefcase and all of a sudden my briefcase was bulging."

Rashid told Vincent: "This is money you are going to take back with you as a token of our good will and as a downpayment of the two agreements you signed this morning."

Vincent objected that this "would be quite a problem" at U.S. customs. Rashid said: "That's not my problem, that's your problem."

To get the cash back to New York, Vincent drove across the Iraqi desert the next day, had his driver smuggle it across the Jordanian border, retrieved it from his driver and flew to Frankfurt. There he hooked up with a "former business associate," paying him $30,000 from the stash for help in getting the money into the U.S. They flew together from Germany to Newark, then split up as they left the plane. The associate, according to Vincent, passed through customs carrying both the contracts and the cash — which he had stuffed in his socks, shirt, coat and underwear — "He had it all over his body."

Meanwhile, Vincent was pulled aside by U.S. officials who "asked me if I had money with me." They searched his suitcase and briefcase, and finally let him go through. It occurred to him "somebody in Iraq or somewhere must have informed somebody in the United States that I was carrying a lot of money."

Having retrieved the cash from his associate, Vincent brought it the next day to Hamdoon, at the Iraqi mission. Hamdoon put $100,000 in a brown envelope "for Tongsun Park," then "gave me $10,000 to keep for myself and he kept the rest of the money."

That evening, said Vincent, he met Park in a Manhattan coffeeshop. "I opened my briefcase and told him there's $100,000 here as a downpayment." They talked for awhile, and then Vincent left.

Prosecutor: "So when you left, Park was sitting at the table?

Vincent: "That's correct. I was hoping he would take care of the bill."

[fourhorses]

Rosett's Notebook: On-going reports from the trial Oil-For-Food



reporter’s notebook:

THE ENVELOPE, PLEASE

07/05 10:28 PM

How much cash can you stuff in a 10” X 13” manila envelope? Jurors got a graphic display today, when defense lawyer Michael Kim stacked bricks of banknotes on the edge of the witness stand, handed cooperating government witness Samir Vincent an envelope, and invited him to start stuffing.

Kim has begun his cross-examination of self-confessed former Iraqi agent Vincent, alleging that Vincent has been telling “half-truths” and fabricating stories of passing cash to Tongsun Park during 1996, a crucial year in which the U.N. and Iraq dickered their way toward getting Oil-for-Food up and running. Today, Kim homed in on two episodes described by Vincent under direct questioning: one occasion on which, Vincent testified, he picked up from Iraq’s U.N. ambassador in N.Y. an envelope filled with $500,000 in cash, which he said he then repacked and gave to Park in a grocery bag; and another occasion on which, Vincent testified, he met Park in a Manhattan coffee shop and gave him $100,000, plus an Iraqi contract for millions more to come once Oil-for-Food began, all in a large white envelope. Asked by Kim about the size of the envelope, Vincent gestured to show dimensions of very roughly 10” X 14”.

Suggesting Vincent’s version never could have happened that way because the cash simply wouldn’t fit, Kim brought a big cardboard file box over to the witness stand, opened it and handed Vincent a 10” X 13” manila envelope, to approximate the dimensions Vincent had described. Then, using $1 bills in place of the $100s that were apparently standard in Iraqi backdoor deals, Kim began unpacking from the box, one after another, neatly wrapped bundles of 100 banknotes apiece, 50 cash bricks in all, the same approximate volume as half a million bucks in $100 bills — stacking them in a small wall in front of Vincent on the edge of the witness stand.

“It was a much bigger envelope than this,” said Vincent, apparently alluding to the $500,000, and surveying the envelope and the stacks of money next to him. “It was $100,000” — the lesser sum — “enclosed in a envelope like this,” — holding up the one Kim had given him.

“Please put the money in the envelope and close it,” Kim told Vincent.

There followed a moment with eerie echoes of the O. J. glove scene, in which Vincent struggled to pack into the envelope the volume-equivalent of $100,000, finally saying, “I can’t close it.”



In the interest of fairness, Kim then offered a slightly larger envelope, 10” X 15”, with the same challenge. That turned out to be big enough. Vincent neatly packed it with the volume equivalent of $100,000 in banknotes, and closed it.

Undaunted, Kim turned to the pile of cash still stacked on the witness stand, and challenged Vincent: “Sir, isn’t it true that you’ve never even seen $4-or-$500,000 in cash before?”

Vincent protested that indeed he had, citing $450,000 he said he had received on one occasion in Baghdad.

In that surreal vein, with Vincent sitting next to piles of banknotes and protesting he was indeed acquainted with large stacks of cash, Kim continued his questioning. Finally Judge Chin finally jumped in, asking the defense, ”Are you done with the cash?... Why don’t you have one of your colleagues box it up.”

So, we now know that you can cram $100,000 into a 10”X15” envelope, but if it’s $500,000 we’re talking about, you need either a much, much bigger envelope or a grocery bag. And we are hearing all this thanks to what was supposed to be a United Nations relief program to bring food and medicine to the people of U.N.-sanctioned Iraq.

Messenger for Saddam
07/04 01:48 PM
Lest it seem this case is all about ancient history — so far the early and mid-1990s — it bears noting that the government's cooperating witness, Samir Vincent, testified last Wednesday that he made efforts, in the U.S., on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government, from 1992 "until the end of 2002."

At that stage, said Vincent, "I believe the war was imminent and all communications stopped."

The year 2002 would bring us well beyond the tenure of former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who stepped down just as the first oil flowed out of Iraq under Oil-for-Food, in December, 1996. The year 2002 would take us six years into the reign of the current U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who was the top administrator of Oil-for-Food as it reached its full and rotten flowering of billions in global graft. There is no sign that Annan himself has been accused of anything. But there may well be insights ahead into the back corridors of U.N. and Iraqi maneuvering in the runup to the ferocious debate that preceded the March, 2003 U.S- led invasion of Iraq.

When interrupted by the current July 4th long weekend, Vincent was still on the witness stand, under direct questioning. More expected when the trial resumes tomorrow.

[fourhorses]

Rosett's Notebook: On-going reports from the trial Oil-For-Food



reporter’s notebook:

A Tale of Two Koreans

07/06/06 12:19 AM



Not to forget that in the current North Korean missile crisis, the Tongsun Park case has played at least a modest part. Recall that from 2003 until July, 2005, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan employed as his personal envoy to the Korean peninsula a Canadian businessman, Maurice Strong.

Strong, by his own admission (see post below) had for years maintained a relationship with Park, and stated last year that among other things, Tongsun Park “has advised me on North Korean issues in my role as U.N. envoy.”

Strong, who enjoyed the rank of U.N. Under-Secretary-General, stepped aside from his U.N. post last year when he was identified as the mysterious “high-ranking U.N. official #2” mentioned—though not accused of any wrongdoing — in a federal indictment last April that named, among others, Tongsun Park. It then emerged in the Sept. 7, 2005 Volcker report on Oil-for-Food that Strong, while serving in an earlier incarnation as the chief architect of Annan’s 1997 U.N. reforms, had accepted a bank check for $988,885, made out to him as “Mr. M Strong,” given to him by Tongsun Park, and allegedly bankrolled by Saddam Hussein.

Strong when confronted with this said first that he did not remember the check, then remembered it but said he did not know the source of the funds, then explained that Park had merely wished to invest a million bucks or so in a Strong family company, which, as it happened, soon after went bankrupt.

Strong has denied any wrongdoing. Park has pleaded “not guilty” to the federal charge of acting as an agent of Saddam. But assuming that all are innocent, there’s still a case to be made that the rest of us are all better off. With that kind of memory, insight and judgment, maybe it’s just as well Maurice Strong is not right now Kofi Annan’s official inside man for the Korean peninsula.

[fourhorses]

Rosett's Notebook: On-going reports from the trial Oil-For-Food



reporter’s notebook:

"Yes I Was"

07/06/06 08:08 PM


It's not often you hear someone protesting that yes, truly, he really was an illicit paid agent of Saddam Hussein— honest. But that's where we've arrived in the cross-examination of cooperating government witness Samir Vincent.

Defense counsel Michael Kim has been arguing that during the period Vincent says he was consorting with Tongsun Park, from 1992-1996, especially the crucial year 1996, Vincent was not actually operating in the U.S. as an unregistered agent of Saddam's Iraq. Vincent, who last year pleaded guilty to doing exactly that from about 1993 to 2003 has been testifying that yes, during all that time he was, he truly was, a messenger for Saddam, an agent of Iraq.

This afternoon that produced exchanges such as:

Kim: "In fact you were not yet an agent of the Iraqi government?"

Vincent: "Yes I was."

The defense has been asking Vincent if in hope of a better plea bargain he isn't making up some aspects of his stories about secret meetings, Baghdad deals and envelopes, bags, and briefcases filled with cash. Today Kim asked Vincent "isn't it true" that your stories about Tongsun Park are "just fabricated to give you somebody to point a finger at?"

Vincent testified he has been telling the truth.

We're still some distance from a verdict, but I can tell you this — I sure couldn't make up some of the exchanges we've been hearing in this courtroom for the past week.

[fourhorses]

Rosett's Notebook: On-going reports from the trial Oil-For-Food



reporter’s notebook:

"A Couple of Inches Can Make a Difference"

07/07/06 09:31 PM

Well, folks, something of a contest has developed between the prosecutors and Tongsun Park's legal team over how much cash you can stuff in an envelope.

As recounted in an earlier post, defense lawyer Michael Kim on Wednesday challenged the testimony of cooperating government witness Samir Vincent that in 1996 he had handled envelopes containing on one occasion $500,000 and on another occasion $100,000 in Iraqi cash. Kim suggested that the amounts of cash involved would simply not fit in the receptacles described. Getting physical, Kim offered Vincent some manila envelopes, and placed before Vincent on the witness stand a wall of neatly bundled $1 bills, equivalent in volume to $500,000 worth of $100s. Vincent managed to pack the volume equivalent of $100,000 into a 10"X15" inch envelope, but it appeared there was no way the remaining piles of cash could fit.

Think again. This morning, with Vincent still on the stand for cross-cross examination, prosecutor Edward O' Callaghan produced a bulging 11"X15" manila envelope, and in front of the jury asked Vincent to unpack it. Vincent opened the envelope, and in front of the jury began pulling out bundles of banknotes and stacking them on the wooden railing of the witness box— 100 to the bundle, with $1 bills once again serving as proxies for $100s. By the time Vincent had emptied the envelope, he was sitting for the second time this week next to a wall of cash bricks, five deep and 10 across.

So we now know that if you want to stuff $500,000 in $100s into an envelope, it's not 10"X15" you need, but 11"X15."

Asked Callaghan, at the end of this exercise: "Isn't it true that a couple of inches can make a difference?"

...Moving on to — you guessed it — yet more cash, a new government witness arrived in the courtroom today, from Amman, Jordan, to talk about two checks issued in 1997 to Maurice Strong. I'll be posting more on that this weekend.

[fourhorses]

Rosett's Notebook: On-going reports from the trial Oil-For-Food



reporter’s notebook:

Flaks and Advisers

07/09/06 08:30 PM

While the testimony plays out in front of the jury, some intriguing people have been turning up in the audience on behalf of Tongsun's Park's defense team — including a former director of the FBI.

On Friday morning, a neatly dressed fellow named William Livingstone approached me in the courtroom, saying he'd come up from Washington to help Park's defense do a better job of organizing its dealings with the press. He gave me a card which said he is a senior vice president at Global Options Inc. — a Washington-based consulting firm that describes itself on its website as "a private CIA, Defense Department, Justice Department, and FBI, all rolled into one."

During a break, I ran into Livingstone speaking in the hall with a white-haired gentleman who is listed by Global Options as a member of their advisory board, retired federal judge and former FBI director, William Sessions. Sessions somewhat less eagerly gave me a business card for his Washington law firm, Holland & Knight, and said he had come to look in on the trial as an adviser. During the mid-day break, Sessions and Tongsun Park's defense team all lunched together in the courthouse cafeteria.

On a related note: Tongsun Park launched a web site during the first week of the trial, which appears to be registered to Global Options — though it's not clear who is actually providing the content: http://www.tongsunpark.com/ . The site talks about Park's modesty, some of his ventures involving Ghana, Zaire, Taiwan, France, and so forth, saying among other things Tongsun Park was at one point the CEO of the Canadian nuclear power company, Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL). An AECL spokesman told me Friday that Park was never CEO, although he did work for the company as a consultant. My repeated queries to the web site about this have received no response.

[fourhorses]

Rosett's Notebook: On-going reports from the trial Oil-For-Food



reporter’s notebook:

Bank Accounts in Jordan

07/10/06 12:15 AM

The testimony about cash just keeps rolling in. It has now rolled as far as those checks to "M. Strong." Friday the prosecution called to the stand a Jordanian branch bank manager, a woman named Rima Elias Azzouni, who testified under oath that in September, 1997, Tongsun Park walked into her bank in the Jordanian capital of Amman, opened an account, and deposited into it $700,000 in U.S. $100 banknotes, much of it bundled in wrappers with markings of the Iraqi government's Al Rafidain Bank.

Azzouni, a lively middle-aged woman with shoulder-length auburn-streaked dark hair, was brought to New York from Amman by the prosecution, specifically to appear as a witness at this trial. Testifying in Arabic, through a court interpreter, she said that she has worked in Amman for the Housing Bank for Trade and Finance for the past 21 years. Under direct questioning, she then described in detail two sets of transactions that took place in 1997 (both apparently the same transactions discussed in far less detail in the Sept. 7, 2005 report by Paul Volcker's probe into Oil-for-Food).

The first, according to Azzouni's testimony, took place on July 30, 1997, when a man with an Iraqi passport, Hammam Rashid Humaym, came into her branch bank, opened an account in his own name and deposited into it "$991,000 American dollars." That same day, Humaym had issued from the account a check made out to "Mr. M. Strong." (This appears to have been the Jordanian bank check that Volcker alleges was delivered to Maurice Strong in New York the following week, who endorsed it over to a business associate Theodore Kheel — who deposited it on August 5, 1997. Strong told the Volcker committee he did not know that the funds might have come from Iraq, and said he regarded the check as payment for an investment Park wished to make in a Strong family company. Strong was working at the time with the rank of Under-Secretary-General as chief architect for Secretary-General Kofi Annan's 1997 reforms at the U.N.).

In opening the account, Humaym provided a phone number, 614191, testified Azzouni, which was the same phone number provided by Park, when less than two months later he walked into Azzouni's bank branch and opened an account under the name T.S. Park. The government showed the jury copies of bank documents with the matching phone numbers, and relevant names and signatures. Azzouni further testified that having deposited $700,000 in cash, on Sept. 14, 1997, Park returned to her bank office later that same day, and had four checks issued on his new account. The jury was shown bank documentation for all four checks:

One for $30,000 to "M. Strong"
One for $45,000 to "CMDC Corp."
One for $500,000 to "Suter's Tavern Inc."
and one to Park himself, to buy $50,000 worth of traveler's checks, denominated in thousands.

Challenged under cross examination by the defense as to how she could recall any of the details as clearly as her testimony suggested, Azzouni testified her signature was on the bank documents, and that Park stood out in her mind, "First of all because the amount was large. And also a Korean nationality, it was the first time I had seen it."

[fourhorses]

Rosett's Notebook: On-going reports from the trial Oil-For-Food



reporter’s notebook:

Christmas in Vegas

07/10/06 12:17 AM

You guessed it. More cash. But this time we set our scene at the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada.

Yet another witness called by the prosecution to testify Friday was Mark Whitmore, who said he has been working since 1995 as a vice president for cage collections and marker operations at the MGM Grand — which means he handles banking services for customers at the hotel and casino.

Whitmore testified that according to MGM Grand records, Tongsun Park during the week before Christmas, 1996, deposited a total of $570,000 in a customer account he had opened at the hotel and casino. According to Whitmore, Park then engaged in some 49 transactions, receiving at one point $20,000 in winnings and cashing out another $65,000 on Dec. 30, when he "settled and closed his account, discharging all debts to the MGM Grand."

If you're trying to double-check the arithmetic at this point, so was I. So, apparently was Tongsun Park's counsel, Michael Kim.

During cross-examination, Kim asked Whitmore: ""Is it the case that Mr. Park during his stay in Las Vegas in late December 1996 lost approximately $485,000?"

After some back-and-forth, the witness said he could not see the exact number from the particular set of records produced in the courtroom, but "having looked at his records prior to coming, I recall that he lost 400-plus-thousand."

What next?

[fourhorses]

Rosett's Notebook: On-going reports from the trial Oil-For-Food



reporter’s notebook:

Cash and Carry

07/10/06 10:37 PM

It just doesn't stop. Today, yet another witness testified about yet more cash. This time it was $100,000, not in an envelope, not in a bag, not in a sack, and definitely not in anyone's underwear — but this time in a "small, medium-sized suitcase."

This new witness was businessman Jack Sabanosh, a former employee of Phoenix International, the company owned by cooperating government witness and self-described former agent of Saddam Hussein, Samir Vincent. Sabanosh has not been accused of anything. He was called by the prosecution to testify about various episodes he had witnessed while working from 1996-1998 for Vincent at the McLean, Virginia office of Phoenix. Among other things, Sabanosh described how he and Vincent decided in January, 1997 to invest in an internet-based trading company. Sabanosh said that he found the company, and Vincent came up with the money — $100,000 packed in a suitcase.

Prosecutor Michael Farbiarz: "What if anything did Mr. Vincent tell you about how and when he got that cash?"

Sabanosh: "Nothing."

[fourhorses]

Rosett's Notebook: On-going reports from the trial Oil-For-Food



reporter’s notebook:

Swiped from the Secretary-General's Cellar?

07/12/06 11:30 AM


So where are the missing U.N. records? Prosecutor Edward O'Callaghan laid out in court on Tuesday that it is standard U.N. practice to keep a log of visitors to U.N. Secretary-General's official residence in Manhattan. The entries in the logbook usually include the name, date and times of arrival and departure. It is then U.N. procedure to store the filled volumes in the basement of the official residence.

These logbooks are potentially of interest, because some of the testimony in this case has involved allegations of meetings at the official residence between Tongsun Park and Boutros-Ghali.

But here's the mystery. O'Callaghan said that when U.N. security staff went looking last year for the residence logs from the Boutros-Ghali era, which spanned January 1992 to December, 1996, they found only one volume, covering only April 1995 to August 1996. (O'Callaghan flashed across a large screen before the jury an exhibit gleaned from that log, showing what appeared to be some 20 visits by Tongsun Park).

The jury heard that "the basement was accessible to the secretary-general, his family, and the secretary-general's residential staff, including security, housekeeping and cooking staff."

Since Boutros-Ghali moved out, the only family in residence has been that of Kofi Annan. Can Boutros tell us more? Can Kofi? ... should we ask the cook?

[fourhorses]

Rosett's Notebook: On-going reports from the trial Oil-For-Food



reporter’s notebook:

Ah, Koreagate

07/12/06 11:24 PM

A number of readers have written in to ask if this 71-year-old defendant is the same Tongsun Park who figured prominently in the 1970s congressional bribery scandal known as Koreagate.

Yep, it's him. This is the same Tongsun Park who in 1977 was indicted in a U.S. District Court on 36 counts. As detailed in a 1980 book by Robert Boettcher with Gordon Freeman, "Gifts of Deceit: Sun Myung Moon, Tongsun Park and the Korean Scandal," these included conspiracy for a political payoff scheme, "bribery, illegal campaign contributions, mail fraud, racketeering, and failure to register as an agent of the KCIA" (KCIA being the Korean Central Intelligence Agency). Park was outside the U.S. when the indictment was issued, and after some negotiation, finally came back to testify in exchange for immunity.

In the current trial, in which Park is charged with laundering money and acting as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the jury has heard nothing of Koreagate. All mention of it has been scrupulously avoided, lest it prejudice the case.

[fourhorses]

So what to make of this curious scene? — in which Saddam’s government paid Tongsun Park more than $2.5 million to bribe an official (or perhaps several) at the UN; but at the UN itself, no one has been accused of taking any money from Park. By many accounts, while Saddam’s regime was massively corrupt, it did not throw money around without expecting some performance in return. And the period most of interest, 1996-1997, was a time at which Saddam was scrimping for cash — Iraq was under sanctions, but the torrent of Oil-for-Food kickbacks, payoffs and smuggling had not yet seriously begun.

Tongsun Park did not receive one lump sum for efforts. He got a series of payments from Baghdad, spread out over at least two years. That raises the question of why, if Park was somehow failing to actually deliver bribes to the UN, Saddam’s regime would have continued forking over the cash. Witnesses at Park’s trial testified that in 1996, while the UN under Boutros Boutros-Ghali was setting up Oil-for-Food, Park received stacks of Iraqi cash delivered to him in the U.S. But in 1997, which was after Oil-for-Food had begun, but while it was being further shaped during Kofi Annan’s first year as UN Secretary-General, Park on two separate occasions, in July and September of 1997, received two more big payouts from Baghdad.

The first, for about $1 million, was deposited by an Iraqi in July, 1997 into the Jordanian bank account from which Park the following week delivered a check for $988,885 to Maurice Strong (Strong told investigators he did not know the source of the funds, and that Park was handing over funds to invest in a Strong family company). Then there was a second big Baghdad payout, in which Park himself, according to a witness at his trial, walked into the same Jordanian bank in September, 1997 with a bag containing $700,000 in cash and deposited the bundle. Later that same day, Park drew down almost the entire account to issue a number of checks, including several for businesses in which he had an interest, and one for $30,000 to M. Strong. What became of that check has not been explained.

And so we arrive at this curious moment in the Oil-for-Food saga. Tongsun Park, to whom Baghdad paid more than $2.5 million for his role in a conspiracy to convey bribes to the UN, is now doing five years in prison for his crime. We can be grateful to the U.S. system of justice that this much has been done. But one might have supposed that given all Park’s efforts, worth millions to Baghdad in bagman fees alone, there would have been someone at the UN on the receiving end of this particular connection; perhaps someone dining out well tonight on bribe money skimmed from the people of Iraq via a job of high public trust. But no one, not one person, has been named. It’s a funny world.


http://claudiarosett.pajamasmedia.com/2 ... e_sent.php

[fourhorses]

One of the other questions we should be asking is who hired Park as agent for Atomic Energy Canada ?

Here, Park indicted and convicted in the US for conspiracy for a political payoff scheme, "bribery, illegal campaign contributions, mail fraud, racketeering, and failure to register as an agent of the KCIA" (KCIA being the Korean Central Intelligence Agency) is a consultant employed by AECL ?

A Korean intel agent as employed consultant to Canada's atomic energy.

Now where were we with Korea's nuclear problems ?

[free_life2]

I am hoping the US Attorney’s Office will take him up on his offer.