2 U.N. Officials Alleged to Be Bribe Targets
BY BENNY AVNI - Special to the Sun
April 15, 2005

UNITED NATIONS - Turtle Bay officials, reporters, and observers scrambled to learn the identity of two U.N. officials and the son of one of them who were mentioned in a criminal complaint yesterday as part of an ongoing series of federal prosecutions related to the oil-for-food program.
Meanwhile, Secretary-General Annan lashed out at America and Britain as being most responsible for the shortcomings of the oil-for-food program.
The criminal complaint was filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan against a South Korean businessman, Tungson Park, who allegedly acted as an agent for Saddam Hussein's government and as a liaison between Iraqi representatives in New York and U.N. officials. He was active in that role starting after the 1991 Gulf War and up to the final days of the oil-for-food program in the aftermath of the 2003 war in Iraq.
The complaint says two Turtle Bay officials, identified only as U.N. Official #1 and U.N. Official #2, were targeted for bribery by Mr. Park, a Korean businessman who was the main figure in a 1970s-era Washington influence-peddling scandal known as Korea-gate. Mr. Park is now accused of acting illegally as an unregistered agent for Saddam.
In addition to yesterday's complaint against Mr. Park, Prosecutor David Kelley indicted three men for participating in an Iraqi kickback scheme in sales of oil under the U.N.-run program - a Texas oil man, David Chalmers; a British businessman, John Irving, and their Bulgarian-American associate, Ludmil Dionissiev.
ABC News reported yesterday that federal authorities looking to arrest Mr. Park, who is believed to be in South Korea, suspect he has information about the involvement of the former U.N. secretary-general Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in wrongdoing under the program.
The disclosures illustrate once again the degree to which the oil-for-food program was so pervasively corrupted, the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Henry Hyde, a Republican of Illinois, said in a statement. They illustrate a continuing pattern of corruption that we have found in numerous instances involving the United Nations, he said. Mr. Hyde vowed that Congress would keep investigating.
Hours before the press conference at the federal courthouse downtown, Mr. Annan, apparently unaware of the new accusations regarding the two unnamed U.N. officials, accused a hostile press and outside organizations of unfairly attacking the United Nations.
He insisted that most of the illicit gains Saddam made under oil for food were not the fault of the United Nations but the result of oil smuggling that happened outside the program. And it was under the American and British watch, Mr. Annan said emphatically, accusing the press of attacking the United Nations. We are outgunned, we are outnumbered, and they have resources that we don't have, and they are relentless, he said.
Mr. Park's partner also worked illegally on behalf of the Iraqi government. He was not identified in yesterday's complaint beyond a description as a cooperative witness, but during his press conference yesterday, Mr. Kelley identified him as Samir Vincent, an Iraqi-American who was indicted earlier for acting as an unregistered agent for Saddam. He has been cooperating with federal authorities since his indictment.
Mr. Vincent, according to the indictment, was the Iraqi liaison to former American officials who could help the Iraqi regime politically, and Mr. Park was the middleman responsible for relations with U.N. officials who began setting up the oil-for-food program.
The two, who had received millions of dollars from Iraq, including bags of cash delivered in diplomatic pouches, met in February 1993 with U.N. Official #1 in that official's Manhattan apartment, according to the complaint against Mr. Park. The complaint said Mr. Park suggested to the Iraqis that the figure of $10 million should take care of the U.N official.
U.N. Official #2 was contacted at a Manhattan restaurant in 1997, at a meeting with Mr. Park, Mr. Vincent, and an unnamed Iraqi official. The U.N. official left the meeting early, and, afterward, Mr. Park told his Iraqi handlers that he had used $5 million to fund dealing with the U.N. official.
In 1997 or 1998,the complaint further alleges, Mr. Park told Mr. Vincent that on one of his trips to Baghdad, he had received $1 million for a Canadian company established by the son of U.N. Official #2. The money, he said, was later lost because the company failed.
This detail was the talk of the United Nations last night at an informal cocktail party for members of the press and officials at the end of a day that had started with Mr. Annan's speech for current and former spokesmen and spokeswomen. Just for the record, Deputy Secretary-General Louise Frechette, who is Canadian, told The New York Sun, I don't have a son - or a daughter, if that ever comes up.
More formally, a spokesman, Stephan Dujarric, said that any U.N. official accused of a crime should be prosecuted. That is why the committee that is investigating oil for food, led by Paul Volcker, was founded, Mr. Dujarric told the Sun, adding that he did not know the identity of the U.N. officials.
A spokesman for the Volcker committee, Michael Holtzman, released a statement yesterday saying that the committee is well aware of the conduct alleged in today's indictments. The statement referred to Bayoil, owned by Mr. Chalmers, the American oil man, as one of the many companies that did oil-for-food business and are being looked at by the committee. But it made no reference to the complaint against Mr. Park or the U.N. officials it mentions.