One-Year Term for Oilman Convicted in Iraq Kickbacks 
By http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/alan_feuer/index.html?inline=nyt-per \o More Articles by Alan Feuer Alan Feuer
November 28, 2007
The New York Times
Original Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/28/us/28wyatt.html
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/oscar_s_wyatt_jr/index.html?inline=nyt-per \o More articles about Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. Oscar S. Wyatt Jr., the self-made Texas oilman who pleaded guilty in October to violating the rules of the http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org \o More articles about the United Nations. United Nations oil-for-food program, was sentenced yesterday to a year and a day in prison, half the maximum penalty he faced under federal sentencing guidelines.
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Jeff Zelevansky/Reuters
Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. received a year and a day in prison, half the federal penalty he faced. 
Mr. Wyatt, who is 83 and ailing, entered a surprise guilty plea in October, on the 14th day of his trial in Federal District Court in Manhattan. He admitted that he paid kickbacks to http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/saddam_hussein/index.html?inline=nyt-per \o More articles about Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein’s government in 2001 to gain access to lucrative Iraqi oil contracts. 
The kickbacks broke the rules of the United Nations program, under which http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/iraq/index.html?inline=nyt-geo \o More news and information about Iraq. Iraq was allowed to sell oil on the open market only if the profits were used to purchase food and medicine for the Iraqi people, as well as United States sanctions on Iraq. 
At a frank and emotional hearing yesterday, Judge http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/denny_chin/index.html?inline=nyt-per \o More articles about Denny Chin. Denny Chin said Mr. Wyatt, despite his crimes, was a “most extraordinary man” who raised himself from a meager youth of picking cotton in the fields of East Texas to running an international oil conglomerate that employed some 20,000 people. 
In meting out a sentence below the range agreed upon in Mr. Wyatt’s guilty plea, Judge Chin said he was influenced by an outpouring of public support for Mr. Wyatt, which included letters from two former mayors of Houston, a retired federal judge and Farah Fawcett. 
Mr. Wyatt has acknowledged that he paid $200,000 in kickbacks to Iraq, funneled through a bank account in Jordan. The witnesses who testified against him at his trial portrayed the oil business as awash in side deals, front companies, illicit payments and international political machinations.
In papers filed to Judge Chin, the government said that Mr. Wyatt’s crimes were “both sophisticated and carefully calculated,” not to mention “breathtakingly immoral.” Despite his “11-hour plea,” the papers said, there was nothing to suggest that Mr. Wyatt was “a new man, reformed, and sure now to put behind him decades of illegal activities.”
Judge Chin apparently did not agree, saying he had never before seen such an abundance of letters in which two telling phrases — “act of kindness” and “he saved my life” — kept cropping up. The judge referred to a letter from a family of Greek restaurateurs whom Mr. Wyatt comforted after their father died and to another from a ship captain injured in an accident whose medical bills were paid by Mr. Wyatt. 
Choking up as he addressed the judge, Mr. Wyatt said that he had served his country for many years in the military and elsewhere and that he was “truly sorry” for having broken the law