Prosecutor Calls Oil-for-Food Suspect a Flight Risk 
By Julia Preston
January 18, 2006
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/18/international/18park.html

Tongsun Park, a South Korean lobbyist who is facing charges in the United Nations' scandal-ridden oil-for-food program, told prosecutors more than a year ago that he would testify before a grand jury, but then they let him leave the United States and he did not return. 
Mr. Park, who was in court yesterday, was arrested Jan. 6 in Houston, after he was expelled from Mexico. New details on his whereabouts over the past year emerged during a sharp argument between the prosecutors and Mr. Park's lawyer over whether he would flee if granted bail. 
The government announced charges against Mr. Park in April 2005 for acting as an unregistered agent for the government of Saddam Hussein in talks to set up the United Nations aid program. 
Mr. Park is a guaranteed risk of flight, an assistant United States attorney, Stephen Miller, told Magistrate Judge Theodore H. Katz in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Mr. Miller said Mr. Park had fled back to South Korea after he was served in December 2004 with a grand jury subpoena at the Watergate hotel in Washington.
But when questioned by the judge, prosecutors acknowledged they had allowed Mr. Park to return to South Korea for the 2004 Christmas holiday based on his pledge that he would return to face the grand jury. 
A business associate of Mr. Park's, an Iraqi-American businessman, Samir Vincent, pleaded guilty to illegal lobbying charges in January 2005. Mr. Park then withdrew his offer to testify and refused to return to the United States, saying he was too ill to travel, prosecutors said.
Mr. Miller said Mr. Park's trip to Mexico showed he was not too ill to travel. He's telling us he's too sick to travel when in fact he was traipsing all over the world, he said.
But Mr. Park's lawyer, Jamie Gardner, argued that he should not remain in jail because he was in frail health, with a transplanted kidney, high blood pressure and diabetes, and 10 medicines to take every day. Ms. Gardner said that friends of Mr. Park, 70, would post $2 million bail to secure his release.
Judge Katz said he was inclined to release Mr. Park on bail. He didn't leave by dark of night, he said, but he postponed his decision until Jan. 26.