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Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) -- A naturalized U.S. citizen working as an Iraqi agent pleaded guilty to federal charges that he made millions of dollars from 1992 to 2003 by secretly lobbying for the repeal of sanctions on Saddam Hussein's regime, prosecutors said.
Samir A. Vincent pleaded guilty in New York today to charges that he conspired to act as an unregistered agent for Iraq and violated federal laws that limited oil sales by the country, prosecutors said in a statement.
The charges are the first in the U.S. government's probe into how Hussein skirted UN sanctions in the so-called oil- for-food program. The UN is under increasing scrutiny from the U.S. Congress for its role in the program, a humanitarian effort marred by alleged fraud, kickbacks and the diversion of more than $17 billion by the deposed Iraqi dictator.
``Today we know that from the moment the Oil-for-Food program was introduced, Saddam Hussein and his agents attempted to subvert it, working the system so that profits were diverted to fund a brutal regime rather than to feed the people of Iraq,'' U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft said in the statement. He and other officials were to discuss the case at a 2 p.m. news conference in Washington.
A 16-page criminal information said Vincent and a company he ran were given the right to purchase millions of barrels of oil under the oil-for-food program and then made millions by selling those rights to another company.
Vincent ``consulted with and repeatedly received direction from the government of Iraq in the course of lobbying officials of the United States government and the United Nations to repeal sanctions against Iraq,'' the four-count criminal information says. A criminal information is an alternative to a grand jury indictment.
Vincent is identified in the criminal information as a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Iraq around 1940. The document provides no other details.
Vincent pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Denny Chin in Manhattan, the statement said.
source: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aPBKLMUjIR3c&refer=top_world_news
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