Park Sentenced to 5 Years in U.N. Oil-for-Food Bribery Scandal

[babylonsister]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/22/AR2007022201650.html

Park Sentenced to 5 Years in U.N. Oil-for-Food Bribery Scandal
South Korean Businessman Had Promised to Get Sanctions Eased for Hussein's Government

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 23, 2007; Page A11

NEW YORK, Feb. 22 -- South Korean businessman and influence peddler Tongsun Park was sentenced Thursday to five years in prison for his role in the bribery scandal surrounding the United Nation's oil-for-food program for Iraq a decade ago.

Park, 71, admitted taking more than $2.5 million from Saddam Hussein's government to bribe senior U.N. officials to persuade them to ease economic sanctions against Iraq after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. He was convicted in July of acting as an unregistered agent of Iraq; he was to have set up a back channel between then-U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and then-Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

The sentence was the maximum possible. U.S. District Judge Denny Chin also ordered Park to forfeit $1.2 million of his assets and fined him $15,000. Chin said Park had "acted out of greed" and "blatantly disregarded the law."

"You either bribed a U.N. official or you were acting as if you were going to bribe a U.N. official," Chin told Park, who stood impassively in the courtroom. He was taken into custody after saying goodbye to friends.

Park's trial and a U.N. investigation exposed a secretive network of businessmen, Washington politicians and other insiders who joined forces in the early 1990s to ease U.N. sanctions imposed on Iraq after it invaded Kuwait in 1990. Their efforts eventually led to the $64 million oil-for-food program allowing Iraq to sell its oil to pay for humanitarian goods.


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[NYC]

1. Does everyone remember Tongsun Park from the past?

Bribery. I would guess it was around 1976.

[babylonsister]

2. Yep, 1970s, for influence-peddling. From the article:

Park's role in the scheme marked an extraordinary comeback -- and another amazing fall -- for a man who was indicted in the 1970s "Koreagate" influence-peddling scandal that roiled Washington. He had funneled hundreds of thousands in cash from the South Korean government to influential members of Congress. After the case broke, Park fled to South Korea. But after bribery charges against him were dropped, he agreed to return to the United States and testify before Congress about his activities.

During that era, Park was a fixture in Washington political circles, hosting parties at his historic George Town Club. His friends and clients included the late House Speaker Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr. (D-Mass.), Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) and William E. Timmons, an influential Republican lobbyist who once joined forces with Park in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the U.S. ouster of Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega.

"He was always known as a man who was willing to bring two people together for the right price," said Mark G. Califano, a former U.N. investigator who co-wrote "Good Intentions Corrupted," a book based on the findings of a U.N. probe led by former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker.