New York – A former United Nations procurement officer pleaded guilty Monday to soliciting a bribe under the oil-for- food program, making him the first U.N. official to face criminal charges in connection with the scandal-tainted operation.
Alexander Yakovlev, a Russian, also pleaded guilty in federal court to charges of wire fraud and money laundering for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from U.N. contractors in his work outside oil-for-food. He could face up to 20 years in prison for each of the three counts in the indictment.
Yakovlev surrendered to FBI agents in Manhattan earlier Monday as U.N.-backed investigators released a report accusing him and Benon Sevan, the former chief of the $64 billion program, of corruption. Sevan was accused of taking about $147,000 in kickbacks.
The probe, led by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, had recommended that both men’s diplomatic immunity be lifted if asked.
Later Monday, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan waived Yakovlev’s immunity when he got just such a request from the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York.
There was no suggestion that the timing of the report and Yakovlev’s plea were coordinated.
Yakovlev’s decision and the Independent Inquiry Committee’s findings, put forward in its third report so far, give new ammunition to critics who have labeled oil-for-food a boondoggle at best and huge swindle at worst.
“Our conclusions are obviously significant and troubling,” Volcker said. “What’s important is that we contribute effectively to the needed reform of the United Nations administration.”
Yakovlev, 52, resigned in June over separate allegations that he helped his son get a job with a company that did business with the United Nations.
Volcker’s team said it would release a final report – expected to be up to 700 pages long – in September. Among other things, that report is expected to consider new evidence suggesting Annan knew more about an contract awarded to a Swiss company that employed his son, Kojo.
The oil-for-food program, launched in December 1996 to help ordinary Iraqis cope with U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, was one of the largest humanitarian programs in history. It was a lifeline for 90 percent of the country’s population of 26 million.
Under the program, Hussein’s regime could sell oil, provided the proceeds went to buy humanitarian goods or pay war reparations.
