The Oil-for-Food Scandal – the Canadian Connection

[styky]

Former UN chief named in Oil-for-Food scandal
From James Bone of The Times in New York


Saddam Hussein’s regime paid millions of dollars to a South Korean businessman to create a “secret backchannel” to top UN officials, including Boutros Boutros Ghali, then the UN Secretary-General, US prosecutors alleged today.

The claim, formally naming Dr Boutros Ghali for the first time, was made at the start of the first US trial over the UN’s Oil-for-Food scandal.

Prosecutors said that Tongsun Park received $2.5 million (£1.4 million) in cash plus promises of lucrative business deals in return for providing access to Dr Boutros Ghali and at least one other top UN official.

“Tongsun Park has access at the highest levels of the UN. Tongsun Park had his price. Tongsun Park sold his access to the UN. He sold it to the Iraqis,” Michael Farbiarz, a federal prosecutor, told the jury. “Cash by the bagful was sent to the US and doled out to Tongsun Park by an agent for Iraq.”

The prosecution did not allege that Dr Boutros Ghali had received any money during negotiations on the creation of the $64 billion humanitarian programme in 1996. But Mr Farbiarz said that the money Iraq paid to Mr Park appeared to have had its desired effect.

Mr Park, 71, who was born in North Korea, faces up to 12 years in prison on charges that he acted as an unregistered foreign agent for Saddam’s Iraq during and after the creation of the programme.

Prosecutors alleged that Mr Park was recruited by Samir Vincent, an Iraqi-American businessman, who has admitted working illegally for Saddam’s Iraq. Mr Vincent handed Mr Park large sums of cash, prosecutors allege. But it was “just a down payment”, and both men were promised business deals once sanctions were lifted.

The prosecution said it would not try to prove what happened to the money given to Mr Park. But Mr Farbiarz said that about $1 million went into an oil company controlled by Maurice Strong, then a top adviser of Kofi Annan, who is now the UN Secretary-General. Mr Strong called it a normal commercial investment.

Michael Kim, Mr Park’s lawyer, described his client as “just a middle-man in the grand international game of oil and money”. He suggested that Mr Park did not know Mr Vincent was acting for Iraq.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 01,00.html

[styky]

Tongsun Park, Maurice Strong, Reid Morden at Atomic Energy of Canada
By Judi McLeod
Friday, June 30, 2006

There’s nothing like your own Internet home page to take the edge off when you’re front and center during the first case related to the oil-for-food scandal to be tried in America. And just in time for his trial, Tongsun Park has his own website (www.tongsunpark.com).

"Mr. Tongsun Park is a great patriot of the Republic of Korea and a unique personality known around the world," says the introduction on the website.

With other unique international figures holding out hope that Park doesn’t sing like the proverbial canary in testimony, we already know that from 1996 to 1998, Mr. Park was an adviser and then the CEO of the Canadian Atomic Energy Co. (AECL) which marketed nuclear reactors to Asia.

That’s the kind of joining of the dots bound to have some running for the antacid.

The kind of dot joining that leads back to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan point man, Canadian Maurice Strong, a place Strong most likely doesn’t need to be.

According to the prosecution in the first case related to the oil-for-food scandal to be tried in America, Mr. Park had strong connections to such UN luminaries as Mr. Boutros-Boutros-Ghali and Canadian oil tycoon and environmentalist Maurice Strong. "He sold his access," said Assistant District Attorney Michael Farbiarz, "for cash by the bagful".

"The money from Iraq, `that traveled from Baghdad to Canada, `$1 million in a cardboard box’ was given to Tongsun Park by Saddam Hussein’s former deputy prime minister, Tariq Aziz, according to the (Paul) Volcker document released on Wednesday." (Marinka Peschmann, Special to Canada Free Press, Sept. 8, 2005), "In addition to the $1 million, Saddam’s top aide, Aziz, who has been in U.S. custody since April 2003, provided Park with an "escort" to safely accompany him out of Iraq into Amman, Jordan.

"In Jordan, `with assistance from an expatriate Iraqi citizen,’ Park "converted" the cash that was "wrapped in $10,000 bundles" into a "bank check" and deposited it into a newly opened Jordanian bank account,

"On the same day, when (Park’s) account was opened, (July 30, 1997) the bank issued a check from his account in the amount of $988,885, made payable to Canada’s `Mr. M. Strong’, an investment from Park to Strong, to buy into the Canadian energy company, Cordex Petroleum Inc. Cordex was `controlled by (Strong) through his family’s holding company, Strovest Holdings Inc.’ and is now bankrupt."

The Canadian involvement in the oil-for-food scandal, never probed, is intrigue ridden.

Korean businessman, Tongsun Park, first met with Maurice Strong in Canada in late 1995 or 1996 through a common acquaintance, according to the Paul Volcker report.

That coincides with the time Park was doing his stint, first as an adviser, then as a CEO at the Canadian Atomic Energy Co.

Joining the dots also leads to another Canadian connection: "Former Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Reid Morden and current "Executive Director" of the Volcker inquiry `recused himself of any involvement’ into the Strong-Park relationship investigation because of what could be perceived as a possible conflict of interest," (Marinka Peschmann, CFP, Sept, 2005),

"On October 16, 1996, Reid Morden wrote a letter to Maurice Strong and Tongsun Park "requesting on behalf" of Atomic Energy of Canada for "the support of Mr, Park and Mr. Strong for the sale of "Candu 9" nuclear reactors during their upcoming meeting in Korea with Korean leaders.

"Reid, who was `employed from 1994 to 1998 as President and Chief Executive Officer" of AECL, `a company owned by the Canadian government’ could not be reached for comment. The Canadian government will not investigate the more than $100 billion oil-for-food program that operated for seven years. As CFP previously reported Canada is the seventh largest donor to the United Nations,"

Meanwhile in a New York courtroom, testimony on the oil-for-food scandal continues. Yesterday Farbiarz told the jury that Iraqi-American businessman Samir Vincent and Korean businessman Tongsun Park, 71, "went to the personal residence of Boutros-Boutros-Ghali for nighttime meetings about the economic sanctions".

"It almost sounded like a Tom Clancy novel," Park’s attorney Michael Kim said.

Problem is that the oil-for-food scandal is truth stranger than any fiction. Nor do the fictitious high flyers in Clancy novels get to keep money intended for the poor in Iraq.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/cover063006.htm

[styky]

The U.N.’s Day in Court:
Oil-for-Food hits a New York courtroom
By Claudia Rosett, National Review
Thursday, June 29, 2006

While United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan has already dismissed the Oil-for-Food scandal as over and done, within the wood-paneled walls of a Manhattan courtroom it has just come to life. The opening this week of the first federal trial linked to the U.N.’s former relief program for Iraq has transformed the distant saga of sanctions busting and stolen billions into an up-close drama, with prosecutors alleging that Saddam Hussein, in his efforts to shake off U.N. sanctions, reached via a secret "back channel" all the way from Baghdad right into Washington, New York, and the U.N. executive suite.

The defendant, South Korean businessman Tongsun Park, is charged in the Southern District of New York with acting as an unregistered agent of Saddam’s Iraq – which tried through various means, especially the manipulation of the 1996-2003 Oil-for-Food program, to end the U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Park’s lawyer, Michael Kim, says the 71-year-old Park is "absolutely not guilty."

Whatever the outcome for Park, his trial – expected to last about three weeks – looks likely to provide an unprecedented view into the workings of U.N. backroom politics. Not least, this comes as a timely warning to beware whatever might be going on today in any back channels the U.N. might have opened with nuclear-happy, sanctions-threatened, oil-rich Iran.

In an opening statement Tuesday, federal prosecutor Michael Farbiarz told the jury that "Iraqi agents had been working since 1991 to try to eliminate the sanctions, to try and create a major exception to them on the way to wholesale elimination." For five years, Iraq worked without success. "But starting in 1996," alleged Farbiarz, "The Iraqi cash began flowing to Tongsun Park. It flowed all year long. Sure enough, by the end of that year…the Iraqis got their multibillion dollar exception to the UN sanctions, the so-called Oil-for-Food program."

Alleging that "Cash by the bagful was sent from Iraq to the United States and doled out here by an Iraqi agent to Tongsun Park," Farbiarz outlined a tale of secret swaps of messages and money in New York cafes and restaurants; night-time meetings at the Sutton Place official residence of former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali; a close encounter with longtime U.N. eminence Maurice Strong, who served as a top adviser to both Boutros-Ghali and then to Kofi Annan; and an episode in which Park in 1997 picked up cash from Saddam’s number two man in Iraq, Tariq Aziz, and "drove out of the Iraqi desert over the Jordanian border." (Boutros-Ghali, Strong, and Annan have all denied any wrong-doing in relation to Oil-for-Food.)

Park’s lawyer, Kim, waved aside the prosecution’s version of events as sounding "like a Tom Clancy novel." Park, he said, was "simply a middleman, a facilitator, like everybody else who was involved in the Oil-for-Food program." Positing that the bigger picture was "much more complicated than prosecutors would have you believe," Kim promised to map out a web of connections including "prominent Republicans" who hob-nobbed with the same Iraqi agent alleged to have passed envelopes and bags of cash to Park, and "Texas oil companies" that saw in Oil-for-Food "a huge money-making opportunity."

The biggest eye-opener in the trial so far is the hob-nobbing Iraqi agent, Samir Vincent, 65-years-old, with a shock of silver-gray hair, who on Tuesday took the stand. Born in Baghdad, Vincent became a naturalized U.S. citizen around 1971. Having done substantial business with Iraq over the years, including under Oil-for-Food, he was arrested in January 2005 on federal charges including engaging in prohibited financial transactions with the government of Iraq, and acting as an unregistered agent of Iraq. He pleaded guilty before the same judge now presiding over the Park trial, Denny Chin, and became a cooperating witness.

Speaking in a firm voice, with only a slight accent to suggest his Iraqi origins, Vincent in his testimony on Tuesday outlined a web of connections that led him over many years, via Baghdad and Washington, to Tongsun Park. He came to the U.S. in the late 1950s to attend Boston College, and eventually went into business for himself, in Virginia, just outside Washington. In 1984, he met the then-ambassador of Iraq, Nizar Hamdoon, an alumnus of the same Jesuit high school that Vincent had attended as a young man in Baghdad. They became good friends. Vincent began doing business with Iraq, where Hamdoon by 1990 had become deputy foreign minister. Vincent was in Baghdad when Saddam invaded Kuwait and the U.N. imposed sanctions. In the aftermath, Vincent by his own account became a conduit for messages and money from Baghdad, as Saddam’s regime sought to slip out from under those sanctions.

In the early 1990s, according to Vincent, this entailed a variety of schemes centered in Washington that simply flopped. In early 1992, he said, he hooked up with a Washington lobbyist, William E. Timmons, who had served as a congressional liaison in the Reagan administration. (Timmons did not return a call yesterday to his office at his Washington firm, Timmons and Company, where he is now listed as Chairman Emeritus). Vincent said that with the help of Timmons, he tried a number of approaches to the State Department, including a request to see John Bolton, currently the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., then assistant secretary for international organization affairs at the State Department. That resulted in meetings with "deputies of Bolton," said Vincent, "But I never had a chance to meet with Bolton himself."

According to Vincent, Timmons also helped him approach Elizabeth Dole, then head of the American Red Cross, with a proposal that the Red Cross take part in a plan similar to, but on a smaller scale than, what later coalesced under the U.N. as Oil-for-Food. The idea was that Iraq would be allowed to sell a limited amount of oil to buy food and medicine, all coordinated with the Red Cross. Vincent said his understanding, relayed second-hand through Timmons, was that this project died when then-Secretary of State James Baker looked over the proposal and decided it was "a no-no because he thought the Iraqis were trying to circumvent sanctions." Baker’s view, according to Vincent, was that "if this has any chance, it has to be done under the United Nations’ auspices."

By late 1992, according to Vincent, he and Timmons concluded that the U.S. State Department would not play ball, and Iraq should look directly to the U.N. Thus, Vincent needed access to the upper reaches of the U.N., and it was at that point, he testified Tuesday, that Timmons introduced him to Tongsun Park. Within a few weeks, "Park had arranged a meeting for us with the Secretary-General of the United Nations at the United Nations headquarters." On that occasion, according to Vincent, it was only Park who actually went in to speak with Boutros-Ghali; Vincent waited in the outer office. But the stage was set for a series of secret meetings and maneuverings, of which we shall no doubt be hearing more in coming days.

Park’s lawyer, Michael Kim, who has not yet really begun to fight, may well produce evidence at odds with the picture that the prosecutors and Samir Vincent have begun to present. For public consumption, Tongsun Park appears to have launched his own website, complete with the information that he is "a unique personality known around the world," but "remains humble and is always an especially gracious host." (His lawyer, in a phone interview Tuesday evening, could not confirm that this is genuinely Park’s website, and Park, who is in federal custody, could not be reached for comment.)

Even after this very preliminary bout, what jumps out is that, in contrast to the folks at the U.N., at least some of the private players who got caught up in the epic scandal that was Oil-for-Food have by now had to tangle with prosecutors, or at least have been required to face inquiries conducted in broad daylight. Also under federal indictment are a number of Saddam’s former business partners, who face trial in the Southern District of New York this November. In Australia, the Cole Commission has been delving in public hearings into misconduct under Oil-for-Food.

But at the U.N. itself, which actually ran Oil-for-Food, not a single official involved in the administration of the program, from Kofi Annan on down, has been required to come forth and tell, in public, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Top U.N. officials have declined invitations to testify at congressional hearings and stonewalled questions from the press. They have tucked under the rug of diplomatic immunity and silence a great many loose ends left by Paul Volcker’s U.N.-authorized probe, which covered some of the material now spilling into the New York courtroom, but did all its questioning in secret and is now hiding from the public its entire archive of underlying documents. No one at Turtle Bay seems even interested that the former director of Oil-for-Food, Benon Sevan, alleged by Volcker to have taken $147,000 in payoffs on Iraqi oil deals, is protesting innocence, uncontested, receiving full U.N. pension and living on Cyprus. Watching Tongsun Park's trial begin on Tuesday, and listening to testimony that is opening one can of worms after another, I had to wonder, were the U.N. subject to a similar standard of law, what might we learn?

Claudia Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/rosett062906.htm

[styky]

Central Park
The Oil for Food scandal yields its first conviction.

BY CLAUDIA ROSETT
Thursday, July 20, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

While the United Nations frames its next response to crisis in the Middle East, its last grand venture in that region--Oil for Food--has finally resulted in a guilty verdict in open court. Last Thursday, a high-rolling, globe-trotting South Korean businessman named Tongsun Park was convicted in the Southern District of New York of conspiracy to launder money and act as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

Mr. Park's case is much entwined with the executive floor of the U.N. For years, he enjoyed extraordinary access to its top officials, complete (at least at one stage) with a U.N. grounds pass. Prosecutors argued that he used this foothold to help Saddam corrupt the 1996-2003 Oil for Food program from the start, the aim being to undermine the U.N. sanctions and ultimately remove them altogether. In return, Mr. Park got at least $2.5 million from Iraq, with a promise of millions more to come.

In the courtroom, the 71-year-old Mr. Park--who did not take the stand--seemed a quiet man with a slicked-back mane of graying hair, sipping bottled water and slouching behind one of his defense team's open laptops. Yet the conspiracy of which this Baghdad-backed secret agent was a part involved dashes across the Iraqi desert, high-level meetings at U.N. headquarters, and bags, briefcases and even underwear stuffed with cash.

The Tongsun Park case has gotten remarkably little press, but it is both an important and a cautionary tale. It illustrates how easily the U.N., behind its veils of secrecy and diplomatic immunity, can be exploited by the most unscrupulous tyrants on the planet. And Mr. Park's conviction is a warning to beware any "back channels" now running between the U.N. executive suite and such rogue states as North Korea and Iran.





Tongsun Park, readers may remember, was a central figure in the U.S. congressional bribery scandal of the 1970s known as "Koreagate." Indicted on federal charges--including money laundering, racketeering and acting as an unregistered agent of South Korea's central intelligence agency--Mr. Park testified in exchange for immunity.
By the early 1990s, Mr. Park was re-established in Washington, where he owned a watering hole known as the Historic Georgetown Club. He also paid frequent visits to New York, getting to know former U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and often dropping by the U.N. official residence. He brought flowers to Mrs. Boutros-Ghali, and helped raise funds for the U.N.'s 50th anniversary.

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the Gulf War, the U.N. imposed sanctions on Iraq. One of Saddam's unregistered agents, an Iraqi-born American citizen by the name of Samir Vincent, began lobbying in the U.S. for an end to U.N. sanctions--or at least a relief program on terms open to manipulation. The 65-year-old Mr. Vincent was arrested last year and pled guilty to conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of Iraq and a number of other charges. Testifying as a cooperating witness at Mr. Park's trial, Mr. Vincent said that he first pitched his proposals in Washington, targeting such people as Elizabeth Dole, then head of the American Red Cross, and John Bolton, now the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., then the State Department's assistant secretary for international organizations. He got nowhere: The Red Cross proposal flopped, and Mr. Bolton wouldn't even see him.

Mr. Vincent then set his sights on the U.N. itself but needed access. In late 1992, he was introduced to Tongsun Park.

So began a period of message-swapping and meetings that gave Baghdad an inside track running from Mr. Vincent to Mr. Park to Mr. Boutros-Ghali and some of his top aides, and back. By 1995, the U.N. Security Council had authorized the broad terms of Oil for Food, but the all-important details remained to be hammered out. At that point, according to Mr. Vincent's testimony, Mr. Park said he could clinch a deal acceptable to Saddam if the Iraqis provided him with $10 million to take care of his "expenses" and his "people"--a reference that Mr. Vincent said he understood to include the only person he "knew of at the time"--"Boutros Boutros-Ghali." Mr. Vincent testified that during that crucial year--1996--he passed $1 million in cash to Mr. Park, $100,000 in an envelope, and $400,000 and then $500,000 in grocery bags. U.N. records show that Mr. Park, during roughly that period, made at least 20 visits to the official residence of the secretary general.

By the end of 1996, the Oil for Food program had begun and the first oil officially exempted from sanctions was flowing from Iraq. But Mr. Boutros-Ghali was on his way out, about to lose his job to Kofi Annan. Baghdad sent word that there would be no more payments to the conspirators. (Mr. Boutros-Ghali has not been accused of wrongdoing and denies receiving any money from Iraq.)

Mr. Park's connection with the U.N., and to Iraq, however, did not end there. He also had ties to a longtime U.N. eminence, a Canadian named Maurice Strong--who served from 1997 to 2005 as one of Mr. Annan's most influential advisers and envoys, holding the U.N.'s third-highest rank, undersecretary general.

While best known as the godfather of the 1997 Kyoto treaty, U.N. records show that Mr. Strong was also the chief architect of Mr. Annan's 1997 U.N. reforms, including the consolidation of the Oil for Food program into one office, reporting to Mr. Annan and headed by longtime U.N. staffer Benon Sevan. (Mr. Sevan was alleged last year by the U.N.'s own probe to have taken $147,000 in payoffs on Oil for Food deals. From Cyprus, beyond reach of U.S. extradition, Mr. Sevan has denied any wrongdoing.)

The trial evidence showed that in that same year--1997--Mr. Park visited Jordan, next door to Iraq, and returned to New York with a check for $988,885 made out to "Mr. M. Strong." It was funded by a lump sum of cash deposited into a Jordanian bank account by an Iraqi passport holder. There followed a complex deal involving Mr. Park's purchase of shares in a Strong family oil company which soon after went bankrupt. But if anyone came out almost $1 million ahead, it was Mr. Strong. (Mr. Strong, whose Canadian office says he is in Beijing, has denied any knowledge of the source of the funds, has not been accused of any crime, and has refused to comment until after Mr. Park's sentencing.)

Nevertheless, Mr. Park's loss did not sour the relationship. In 2000, and "probably" for some years after that, Mr. Park paid the rent for a private office that Mr. Strong kept in midtown Manhattan, according to the trial testimony of Washington businessman C. Wyatt Dickerson. During that time, Mr. Strong was still on U.N. contract as a special adviser to Mr. Annan. And when Mr. Strong became Mr. Annan's personal envoy to North Korea from 2003 to 2005, he turned, as he later acknowledged, to Mr. Park--born in what is now North Korea--for advice.





It is unlikely that any of this would have come to light had not the U.S., over U.N. protests, toppled Saddam in 2003. Congressional investigations have since found that the U.N. program opened the floodgates for anywhere from $10 billion to $17 billion in graft, scams and smuggling, some of which went to pay for Saddam's palaces, weapons and rewards for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
Many mysteries remain, some perhaps to be answered when a number of alleged co-conspirators of Messrs. Vincent and Park go on trial this November. Now facing up to 12 years in prison--and also, now, under federal indictment in the District of Columbia for lying to the FBI--Mr. Park might yet decide to cooperate with the prosecution. The biggest question is this: If the U.N. still has its back channels, which it almost certainly does, what is going on in them today?

Ms. Rosett is journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Ms. Rosett is a journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Her column appears here and in The Wall Street Journal Europe on alternate Wednesdays.

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial ... =110008678

[styky]

No better place to hide from American justice than China
By Judi McLeod

Wednesday, August 2, 2006

The tantalizing tale of missing Kofi Annan pointman Maurice Strong is no longer one of those puzzling unsolved mysteries.

Canadian `Chairman Mo', a big gun in the international arena, dropped right off the radar screen in April of 2005 when his alleged ties to the UN Oil-for-Food scandal cropped up and wouldn't go away.

According to the investigative Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Mo's location has been pinpointed, and it never required a Miss Marple to track him down.

AWOL Maurice Strong is alive and kicking in Beijing.

Canada Free Press, whose two favourite people to track are Mo and his sidekick, the self-reinvented-as-American-patriot Mikhail Gorbachev, always knew that Mo would return to China, his favourite place on Mother Earth.

What we didn't know, but read with relish in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, is that the smooth-talking architect of the Kyoto Protocol, has no choice but to remain in the Orient,

"Maurice must now remain in China (where he is very welcome) to avoid questioning by the FBI and Canadian investigators about the $1 million that Tongsun gave him and which Mo tried to hide in his son Fred's nuclear power company, which now is bankrupt." (Pittsburg Tribune-Review, July 30, 2006.)

Pointing out that Strong is "very welcome" in China is a polite way of saying that he's right at home where overpaid environmental spin doctors have long claimed that Maurice Strong was the only man alive who could see that the United States of America is replaced by Communist China as world superpower.

That's where Mo's sidekick Mikhail Gorbachev--who was never really ever out--comes in.

Gorbachev is living La Dolce Vita in San Francisco at the Presidio, where in 1993, he had a three-star general present him the keys to his new digs.

International diplomats, no matter how anti-American, always arrive in the West with a soft landing.

The Tribune-Review comes right out and throws sunlight on the business partnership Strong has with George Soros.

Like the bad guys in a spy movie, Strong and Soros teamed up on the Chery, a sort of poor man's made-in-China vehicle, with which they hope to flood the U.S. market next year.

CFP thinks that it's only natural that Strong would be dodging the authorities in China.

The Peoples' Republic of China is increasingly viewed as a country governed by a brutal regime, where just posting an anti-government essay on the Internet can get your imprisoned, or being Christian can get you killed.

Aside from addressing the occasional symposium on global warming, Chairman Mo remains on the lam in China.

Are Strong and other UN world players protected for life by something called UN international immunity?

Bringing Maurice Strong to justice would be as difficult as having him prove his credentials. Long ago his diplomatic status was bought for him, courtesy of an influential Canadian Liberal politician by the name of Paul Martin Sr., the late father of the recently defeated Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin Jr.

The relationship between Strong and the Martins may be based on more than international politics, another Mo intrigue with a trail long ago gone cold.

Maurice Strong, who keeps popping up in all the right places, has always been perceived as a cross between the Wizard of Oz and Dr. No.

It would be poetic justice of a sort if the gruesome trio of Maurice Strong Mikhail Gorbachev and George Soros would finish their days on earth in Beijing.

This is surely the place where the anti-American, commie loving aging activists belong.

Now if only they would call home the murderer by default of Blue Helmets, Kofi Annan.

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/cover080206.htm

[skeena484]

Maurice Strong, who keeps popping up in all the right places, has always been perceived as a cross between the Wizard of Oz and Dr. No.


http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/cover080206.htm

When I first read that line by Judi McLeod I felt like she was reading my mind. I’ve been following the path of Mo and the politicians, Canadian and international who have furthered his trip down the “yellow brick road” towards world domination by the wizard himself and the comparison to Dr. No occurred to me years ago. If he is ever allowed back in Canada and has the audacity to set foot on Canadian soil he should be arrested.

[styky]

US seeks to extradite former oil-for-food chief
Caroline Overington
January 18, 2007

WHEN corruption investigators first went looking for the head of the UN oil-for-food program in 2004, they found him in Australia.
Benon Sevan, a 69-year-old diplomat who had worked for the UN since 1965, was hiding in a luxurious resort in Noosa Heads.
He had slipped into Queensland, where a daughter was living, just days before being accused of corrupting the $60 billion oil-for-food program.

Mr Sevan was accused of stashing kickbacks from suppliers in his bank accounts.

In 2000, he also allegedly ignored an allegation that Australia's wheat exporter, AWB, was corrupting the oil-for-food program by funnelling hundreds of millions of dollars in kickbacks to the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Three years on, the law has caught up with Mr Sevan.

In New York yesterday, he was indicted on charges of fraud and corruption. The US is seeking his extradition from his native Cyprus. If convicted, he faces up to 50 years in jail.

Mr Sevan is among 14 people likely to be charged in the US over the oil-for-food scandal, among them a Texas oilman, Oscar S. Wyatt.

Keenly watching their fate will be 11 former AWB employees, and one former BHP executive, who are still waiting to hear whether they will be charged over their roles in the scandal.

A report by commissioner Terence Cole last year found the 12 executives may have broken domestic laws when they helped funnel money to Saddam's regime, in breach of UN sanctions.

A taskforce is investigating whether criminal charges should be brought against the men.

Mr Sevan did not give evidence to the Cole inquiry and he has not been interviewed by Australian Federal Police.

When confronted by American reporters at Noosa in 2004, Mr Sevan said: "I am going back to America tomorrow morning - I am not running away. I will talk about this when it's all over."

The Cole inquiry was last year told that Mr Sevan was alerted to allegations of corruption against AWB on December 4, 1999, but failed to act.

The chief of the Contracts Processing Section of the UN's Office of the Iraq Program, John Almstrom, wrote to him on that date, saying Iraq's regime had told Canada to deposit $700,000 in a Jordanian bank account, ostensibly to cover the cost of transporting Canadian wheat around Iraq.

Canada refused. Iraqi officials told the Canadians that AWB had agreed to make similar payments, a clear breach of UN sanctions. The matter was raised with Australian diplomat Bronte Moules in January 2000.

On January 13, 2000, Ms Moules wrote the first of a series of secret cables to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra, alerting Australian government officials to the possibility that AWB was corrupting the oil-for-food program.

Her cables were routinely ignored, or read and dismissed as nonsense. The Cole report cleared the Government of wrongdoing.

Mr Sevan came to the attention of US investigators in April 2004 when it was revealed he had stashed $144,000 in foreign bank accounts. He said the money was a gift from his aunt.

Mr Sevan has been charged with bribery and conspiracy to commit wire fraud for allegedly accepting about $200,000.

His lawyer yesterday said he was a "political scapegoat" who had accounted for "every penny" of the oil-for-food program.

Ephraim Nadler, 79, a businessman and brother-in-law of former UN secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali, was also named in yesterday's indictment.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/st ... 02,00.html

[littleharbour]

littleharbour...That's it exactly If only they would. and that leads to another question..why would'nt they.

Given the article posted on this other thread today, it seems as though the US media is starting to become interested in this unusual Canadian. Let's hope some day the US authorities get an opportunity to question Mr. Strong south of the border.

http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=76137

[fourhorses]

I read a report recently that Mo Strong was staying in the Dominican for health reasons (pneumonia) - what the air in China not good enough ?

Dollars to donuts, he is in and out of the US on a somewhat frequent basis ..His passport has to expire sooner or later
Does he travel on a Canadian passport?

[styky]

Cross link

<a href=http://www.freedominion.ca/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=76250>5-year sentence in oil-for-food caper </a>

[rbacon]

Don't ever PO Styky she has a long memory....

[theservant]

truth is true

they own us all


not much left of me

here we go

hope you can swim

shutup

[styky]

Don't ever PO Styky she has a long memory....

You got that right

[free_life2]

Sorry I should have posted this article to this sticky thread....just let the other thread die...best to keep this all in one place.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070222/ap_ ... 0FDscXIr0F

Tongsun Park 5-year sentence in oil-for-food caper



By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press WriterThu Feb 22, 5:38 PM ET

South Korean businessman Tongsun Park, who was accused in the 1970s of trying to buy influence in Congress in the "Koreagate" scandal, was sentenced to five years in prison for accepting at least $2 million to work on Iraq's behalf to influence the U.N. oil-for-food program.

Park was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Denny Chin for his conviction seven months ago on conspiracy charges. A jury had rejected his claims that he was a middleman representing the U.N.'s interests in relieving the pain of Iraqis under Saddam Hussein.

The judge called it a "harsh" sentence for a 71-year-old man in poor health but said it was reasonable and appropriate under the circumstances.

"You acted out of greed, acted to profit out of what was supposed to be a humanitarian program," the judge said.

Park said he didn't want to speak in court. His lawyer noted his client's age, poor health and desire to get his life back on track.

Park's health problems include diabetes, high blood pressure and a kidney transplant.

He was indicted in the 1970s in the Koreagate scandal — in which agents of the Korean government were accused of trying to buy influence in Congress — but the charges were dropped.

Just before the judge imposed the oil-for-food sentence, he noted that Park had signed a document Nov. 29 agreeing that his misconduct involved more than $2.5 million, that he would not appeal his sentence and that he would be sentenced within a range of four years, nine months to five years, the maximum sentence allowed.

Federal prosecutors said at Park's trial in July that he was part of a corrupt group of bureaucrats and oil tycoons who enabled a humanitarian effort to be twisted into a corrupt venture for bureaucrats, oil tycoons and Saddam.

Earlier Thursday, the judge rejected requests by Texas oilman Oscar S. Wyatt Jr.; Houston-based Bayoil (USA) Inc.'s sole shareholder, David B. Chalmers Jr.; and oil trader Ludmil Dionissiev to dismiss charges that they paid secret and illegal surcharges to Iraq to receive allocations of oil. Among the charges are wire fraud and conspiracy.

The three have pleaded not guilty, were freed on bail and are awaiting trial.

The judge noted that Wyatt had claimed he was being prosecuted solely because he criticized U.S. policies and actions toward Iraq but had offered no credible evidence to support the theory.

"Mere speculation that prosecutors were influenced by Wyatt's opposition to U.S. foreign policy is not sufficient to show discriminatory purpose," the judge wrote.

Park was convicted despite the few links between him and Iraq after 1997, even though the conspiracy was alleged to have stretched from 1992 to 2002.

The oil-for-food program from 1996 to 2003 let the Iraqi government sell oil primarily to buy food and medicine for Iraqis, suffering because of sanctions imposed on their country after it invaded Kuwait and brought about the first Gulf War. By 2000, authorities said, Saddam had begun insisting that those he dealt with pay kickbacks.

Prosecutors said Park exploited his relationship with former U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to join an effort by Samir A. Vincent, an Iraqi-American, to earn the favor of Iraq and share as much as $45 million in windfall gains if the sanctions were lifted.

Authorities say the oil-for-food program was corrupted after Saddam was allowed to choose the buyers of Iraqi oil and the sellers of humanitarian goods.

Vincent, who testified against Park, has pleaded guilty to federal charges and is cooperating with the government. He said Park arranged meetings during 1993 involving Park, Boutros-Ghali and Vincent, including three meetings at Boutros-Ghali's New York residence.

Prosecutors said evidence proved that some money Park received from the government of Iraq was supposed to be used to "take care" of Boutros-Ghali.

An independent panel concluded in 2005 that Iraq had a scheme to bribe Boutros-Ghali but found no evidence the secretary-general was aware of the plot or received the money.

Park also faces trial in Washington on charges that he made false statements about his participation in the oil-for-food program during a December 2004 interview by FBI agents at the Watergate Hotel.

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Maybe he will be more willing to talk about others now. May the dominos start falling.

[fourhorses]

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


reporter’s notebook:


Statement by Maurice F. Strong
06/30/06 07:48 AM

In response to questions raised concerning my relationship with Mr. Tongsun Park and allegations to his role in respect of the United Nation’s Iraqi oil-for-food program I want to make clear that:



- Having served UN Secretaries-General since 1970 in several advisory and executive capacities I have had no involvement or connection whatsoever with the UN’s Iraqi oil-for-food program or any other of its Iraqi activities. Indeed I cannot recall a single instance in which I had any contact or discussion on the program with any of the officials responsible.

- In 1997, Mr. Park invested on a normal commercial basis in an energy company with which I was associated that had no relationship with Iraq

- I have continued to maintain a relationship with Mr. Park. Indeed, as a native of North Korea he has advised me on North Korean issues in my role as UN Envoy.

- I will make myself available to both the Volcker Commission and the US Attorney’s Office to provide any further information which would assist in the expeditious resolution of this matter so as to have this cloud removed as soon as possible.


http://rosett.nationalreview.com/