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Four Charged in UN Oil for Food 'Scandal'

HeadlineApr 15, 2005

Four more people were charged Thursday in the so-called UN oil-for-food scandal. Among them-a Texas oil executive and a South Korean businessman who was at the center of a 1970s corruption case involving Congress. The indictment also suggested that money allegedly skimmed from the oil program might have ended up in the hands of two U.N. officials. Their names were not released. One of the indictments charges Texas businessman David Chalmers, who is the sole shareholder of Bayoil and two oil traders with paying millions in secret kickbacks to Saddam Hussein’s government to secure oil deals. The fourth person charged was Tongsun Park, a South Korean citizen and fugitive who allegedly accepted millions of dollars from the Iraqi government while he operated in the United States as an unregistered agent for Baghdad. In the 1970s, Park was at the center of what became known as the Koreagate scandal, in which he was accused of trying to buy influence in Congress.

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