Lobbyist trial in Iraqi oil-for-food case starts

By Christine Kearney
June 26, 2006
Reuters
Original Source: http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-06-26T235145Z_01_N26169783_RTRUKOC_0_US-UN-TRIAL.xml&archived=False

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Jury selection began on Monday in the trial of a South Korean lobbyist accused of acting as a unregistered foreign agent of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the U.N. oil-for-food program.
Tongsun Park, 71, is accused of accepting millions of dollars from the Iraqi government and scheming with top U.N. and Iraqi officials to defraud the now-defunct program.
His trial at the U.S. District Court in Manhattan is the first U.S. federal case in the international scandal. Park has pleaded not guilty and faces a maximum of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.
Opening arguments were expected on Tuesday.
The oil-for-food program allowed Iraq to sell oil and use the proceeds to buy nonmilitary goods, under United Nations supervision. It aimed to ease the impact of U.N. sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait but the $67 billion program was rife with corruption, investigators say.
U.S. and U.N. investigations have revealed that lobbyists, U.N. and Iraqi officials enriched themselves through kickbacks to arrange oil sales.
Park faces charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government and money laundering.
U.S. District Judge Denny Chin and attorneys selected the jury by asking potential members if anything they might know about the scandal could influence their ability to be fair.
Park's defense attorney Michael Kim also asked the judge to instruct the jury that Park has a medical condition and will be prone to falling asleep during the trial. Park has had a kidney transplant and suffers from diabetes.
Park gained notoriety in the 1970s as a lobbyist who gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to members of Congress as part of the influence-peddling scandal dubbed Koreagate.
Prosecutors say in 1993 Park met with an unnamed high-ranking U. N. official at his Manhattan apartment to set the terms of the oil-for-food program.