Posted on 06/15/2006 9:06:52 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - A South Korean businessman accused of accepting millions of dollars from Iraq in the United Nations oil-for-food scandal has been charged with lying to the FBI.
On Wednesday, a federal grand jury returned an indictment accusing Tongsun Park of falsely telling investigators in 2004 that he played no role more than a decade ago in the adoption of the U.N. resolution that set up the oil-for-food program.
The one-count, single-sentence indictment also says Park made false statements when he said he had no business dealings with an unidentified U.N. official, and when he told the FBI that he did not exchange money with an unidentified Iraqi-American, and that he had never been to that person's office.
In New York, Park already is facing charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government and money laundering. He has pleaded not guilty.
Park's lawyer, Michael Kim, said the government is concerned it will lose the case in New York and is seeking "a second bite of the apple" with the Washington case, which was assigned to U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan. The New York case is scheduled to go to trial June 26.
The oil-for-food program ran from 1996 to 2003 to help Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Baghdad's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
Park was charged in New York in April 2005 with accepting millions of dollars from the Iraqi government while he operated in the United States as an unregistered agent for Iraq's oil-for-food program. He became a fugitive when he failed to respond to a U.S. warrant, and he was arrested in Houston in January after being expelled from Mexico.
In the 1970s, Park was at the center of what became known as the Koreagate scandal, in which he was accused of trying to buy influence in Congress.
Park was indicted in the scandal, but the charges were dropped.
Park Tongsun, a South Korean fugitive businessman, speaks to a reporter during an interview at downtown Seoul in this picture taken in August, 2004. Park, accused of accepting millions of dollars from Iraq in the United Nation's oil-for-food program scandal is hiding in Tokyo where he is considering a U.S. plea bargain offer, a news report said Saturday, April 16, 2005. (AP Photo/Yonhap, Jin Sung-chul)
This flat face has been scum for decades and deserves more than a wrist slap.
FINALLY!!! SOMEONE got it for that hideous scandal Oil For Food fiasco!!!
Thanks for posting. BTTT!
Hope they put him in a cell next to his old buddy Edwin Edwards.
... in which he was accused of trying to buy influence in Congress.
I wonder what made him think that would work?
First wife, yes.
They came cheap back then; bribes must have a greater inflationary rate than the dollar eh what??
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