U.S. Citizen Pleads Guilty in Oil-For-Food Scam
Charles Johnson
Tue Jan 18, 2005 at 5:35 pm PST • Views: 174
Here’s why we’re suddenly seeing a mass exodus of UN employees, and defensive statements from Kofi Annan; the Oil-For-Food scandal is starting to break wide open: U.S. Citizen Pleads Guilty in Oil-For-Food Scam.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An Iraqi-American illegally acted as an agent for Iraq under Saddam Hussein and received millions of dollars worth of oil from the country’s U.N. oil-for-food program, U.S. court documents showed on Tuesday.
Samir Vincent, 64, a naturalized American citizen, pleaded guilty to four charges as part of a plea deal with the government, which is investigating whether U.S. laws were violated in the $64 billion oil-for-food program.
According to documents filed in the U.S. District Court in New York, Vincent pleaded guilty to conspiring and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, violating economic sanctions and income tax fraud violations.
Vincent, who surrendered to the FBI on Tuesday morning in New York, faces a maximum of 28 years in prison, which could be reduced for cooperation. He also agreed to cooperate with the investigation by the U.S. Justice Department into corruption in the oil-for-food program.
Frank says: