Defense Accuses UN of 'Witch Hunt'
Larry Neumeister
June 6, 2007
New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-UN-Procurement.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

NEW YORK (AP) -- A defense lawyer said Tuesday that the United Nations engaged in a ''witch hunt'' ending in the arrest of a former procurement official to repair a reputation tattered by corruption scandals such as its oil-for-food program.
Sanjaya Bahelis is on trial on charges that he accepted cash and a huge discount on a Manhattan apartment in exchange for enabling a longtime Florida friend to get an inside track on $100 million in electronics contracts for his companies.
His attorney, Richard Herman, said the United Nations thought it could polish its reputation by investigating corruption itself.
''This, ladies and gentlemen, was a witch hunt,'' Herman said. ''This is an effort to clean up the bad public relations the United Nations suffered in the past few years.''
Prosecutors objected when Herman made the statement on behalf of Bahel, chief of the U.N.'s Commodity Procurement Section from 1999 to 2003. After 2003, Bahel was in charge of the postal office at the United Nations until he was fired Dec. 21.
U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Griesa said Herman was free to argue as he wished despite complaints by prosecutors that there was no evidence in the case to support his claims.
Herman cited the oil-for-food program as an example. The program from 1996 to 2003 let the Iraqi government sell oil primarily to buy food and medicine for its citizens after the first Gulf War. By 2000, authorities said, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had begun insisting on kickbacks from those he dealt with in the program.
U.N. deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said Tuesday the United Nations would comment at the end of the trial.
Bahel, 57, is charged with bribery, wire fraud and mail fraud. He could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
Herman also attacked the reliability of the prosecutor's chief witness, Nishan Kohli, a Miami man who pleaded guilty to bribery and testified against Bahel.
During the government's closing, Assistant U.S. Attorney Alex Willscher said Bahel ''sold himself and his office at the United Nations.''
He accused Bahel of bringing ''a stain of corruption within that organization.''
He said Bahel acted like a surrogate employee of the Kohli family businesses by providing expert advice and inside information, ghostwriting correspondence with the United Nations and warning the Kohlis when something might get in the way of their bids on contracts.