FBI Arrests Businessman In UN Oil-For-Food Scandal (Houston)

A South Korean businessman accused of receiving millions of dollars from Saddam Hussein's regime to bribe top United Nations officials over the controversial oil-for-food programme has been arrested by FBI agents in Houston, Texas.

Tongsun Park is expected to co-operate with the US authorities in a deal that could throw fresh light on rampant corruption surrounding the UN-administered programme.

The indictment, released on Friday, refers to attempts to buy the influence of two unnamed UN officials. A separate investigation - led by Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman - into the scandal concluded that Mr Park and another accused man tried to pass $1 million to the former UN secretary-general, Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

The report said there was no evidence that Mr Boutros-Ghali received or agreed to receive the money. The Volcker commission also found that in 1997 Mr Park invested $1 million in a Canadian company linked to the son of Maurice Strong, a close aide to Kofi Annan, the current secretary-general, in an attempt to secure his help for Iraq. The report found no evidence that Mr Strong was involved.

"Park's arrest is an important step in the federal government's efforts to bring to justice those who broke US law in undermining the humanitarian purpose of that programme," said Michael Garcia, the US attorney in Manhattan.

He said Mr Park arranged meetings in 1993 between himself, a UN official and another co-operating witness, including one at the official's Manhattan apartment. Mr Park and the other witness also allegedly arranged a meeting in 1993, in Geneva, between the official, identified as "UN Official No 1", and two Iraqi representatives.

The FBI said in a court document that at a New York restaurant in 1996 the government witness met Mr Park, an Iraqi official and another high-ranking figure (referred to as "UN Official No 2"), who left the meeting early.

Mr Park told the government witness in 1997 or 1998 that he had invested about $1 million he had received from Iraq in a Canadian company, established by the son of UN Official No 2.

Mr Park, who was allegedly paid $2 million, was first indicted for his role in the programme last April. His whereabouts have not been publicly known since then, but he is thought to have been negotiating a possible deal with US officials.

Mr Annan had been hoping that the Volcker report, in which he was sharply criticised, would put an end to the scandal, but federal prosecutors are determined to pursue the bribery allegations.

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39a9e4cf7770.htm
Winning Washington's Ear, With a Checkbook and a Tale

News/Current Events Breaking News News
Source: New York Times
Published: 8/28/00 Author: TIM GOLDEN and DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI
Posted on 08/27/2000 21:04:31 PDT by kattracks

At his small suite of offices in Fort Lee, N.J., David Chang was a tycoon without much to do.

Mr. Chang, 56, often rode to work in a Rolls-Royce and strode through the door in a long mink coat, a cigarette dangling from his lips. But although his holding company boasted of big, global deals in everything from oil exploration to telecommunications, almost none of those ventures ever got off the ground.

"I never really saw anybody there do anything," said Clark R. Wilcox, a former banking executive who was hired to help run the firm in 1997, only to quit soon after and successfully sue his former employer for breach of contract.

In Washington, however, Mr. Chang cut a very different figure. There, he attended state dinners at the White House and visited informally with the president. He hired Mr. Clinton's chief fund-raiser as a consultant and cultivated senators and congressmen from both parties. The chairman of his company, a retired Navy admiral, had been chief of staff to George Bush when he was vice president.

The secret of Mr. Chang's popularity among American politicians was of course no secret: he and his employees gave generously to favored candidates and their parties -- more than 100 contributions that totaled $325,000. Mr. Chang also pledged at least $1 million toward the presidential library that Mr. Clinton hopes to build in Little Rock, Ark.

(snip)

Now, Mr. Chang is at the center of a widening federal inquiry into the possibility that Mr. Torricelli's 1996 campaign staff may have been complicit in Mr. Chang's illegal donations -- something the senator strongly denies. Lawyers familiar with the case say Mr. Chang has given prosecutors information suggesting that Mr. Torricelli's aides accounted improperly for some of his contributions, and at least two dozen Federal Bureau of Investigation agents have been added to the inquiry in recent weeks.

Mr. Torricelli and other politicians now cast him as an unscrupulous con man, and themselves as his unwitting victims. Through his Washington lawyer, Mr. Chang declined to comment at all. But Mr. Chang's credibility is likely to be a central issue in any new case that is brought.

(snip)

Among the first and most important of Mr. Chang's Washington contacts was Daniel J. Murphy, a high-profile lobbyist with a gleaming government résumé. A retired four-star admiral, Mr. Murphy had commanded the Navy's Sixth Fleet, had served as chief of staff to George Bush when he was vice president, and had been a deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and a deputy undersecretary of defense.

After resigning from Vice President Bush's staff in 1985, Mr. Murphy went to work as a lobbyist, first for Gray & Company, a firm closely tied to the Reagan administration, and then on his own. He quickly built a reputation for putting business ahead of politics, representing the Marxist government of Angola, trying to drum up business in Gen. Manuel Noriega's Panama, and maintaining a friendship with Tongsun Park, the former South Korean lobbyist and intelligence agent, long after Mr. Park's ties to American congressmen touched off a political scandal involving United States officials in the late 1970's.

Mr. Murphy, who declined to say anything about his relationsip with Mr. Chang, began working for him as a consultant and lobbyist by at least 1990, according to Mr. Schertler, Mr. Chang's lawyer. Mr. Murphy soon became a business partner as well, helping Mr. Chang open some of the more important doors in Washington.

"He was at the White House once a month, when I was there," said one former assistant who worked for Mr. Chang during the latter half of the Bush administration. Mr. Bush's spokesman said the former president did not recall ever meeting Mr. Chang, and there are no records that he ever made a private visit to the White House.

(snip)

Much more at link.

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