Iraqi-born U.S. citizen pleads guilty in oil-for-food probe

WASHINGTON – An Iraqi-American businessman, accused of pocketing millions of dollars through the U.N. oil-for-food program with Iraq, pleaded guilty Tuesday to acting as an illegal agent of Saddam Hussein’s government.

Samir A. Vincent, 64, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Annandale, Va., is the first person to be charged in the Justice Department’s investigation of the program, which U.N. audits have shown was badly mismanaged.

Under the program, proceeds from the sale of oil from Iraq were placed into an account overseen by the United Nations. Money was to be withdrawn by Iraq only to purchase food, medicine and other humanitarian necessities.

The United Nations operated the program from 1996 to 2003 as a way for Iraq’s oil riches to benefit its people, who were suffering from years of deprivation brought on by economic sanctions imposed on Saddam’s regime following its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

The program produced an estimated $67 billion for humanitarian needs in Iraq but was used by Saddam to generate illegal kickbacks that totaled another $1.7 billion, according to a CIA report by special weapons inspector Charles Duelfer.

Vincent was among dozens of people and companies in the United States and elsewhere to receive vouchers from Saddam’s government for allocations of Iraqi oil as well as the right to keep profits they made selling or trading the oil.

Vincent received the rights to some 9 million barrels of oil and cash payments from Saddam’s government in return for lobbying U.S. and U.N. officials on issues such as weakening of economic sanctions, the admission of arms inspectors and the oil-for-food program itself, prosecutors said.

Attorney General John Ashcroft said Vincent was one of Saddam’s “accomplices” in a broad effort by Iraq to turn the oil-for-food program into a vehicle for Iraq to sell influence and fatten its treasury.

“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,” Ashcroft said.

The scandal surrounding the oil-for-food program has shaken the United Nations. Secretary-General Kofi Annan has appointed a three-person commission headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker to investigate.

In a statement in federal court in New York on Tuesday, Vincent said that in 1996 during negotiations on the oil-for-food program some Iraqi government cash was given to a person “whom I understood was a United Nations official.”

Court documents say only that this unspecified payment went to “another individual” to satisfy an agreement regarding the pro-Iraqi effort to influence the U.N. resolution creating the program.

The lead federal prosecutor in the case, U.S. Attorney David Kelley of New York, said his office has an “ongoing dialogue” with that commission. In a statement Tuesday, the commission said it hopes the guilty plea will make it possible for Vincent to provide information in that probe.

Congress also is investigating, with part of that probe involving Annan’s son, Kojo Annan, who worked in Africa for a Swiss company that had a contract under the oil-for-food program. Kojo Annan has denounced the probe as a political witch hunt.

Vincent, who operated a company called Phoenix International LLC, profited under the scheme by as much as $5 million, Kelley said. A decathlete on Iraq’s 1964 Olympic team, Vincent had worked for years to improve U.S.-Iraqi relations, including helping organize an invitation for a 1999 U.S. tour by Iraqi clerics with evangelist Billy Graham.

But according to the court papers, between 1992 and 2003 Vincent operated on direct instructions from Saddam’s government, including carrying a message from the Iraqi intelligence service in November 2001 to a former U.S. official regarding Iraq’s position on readmission of weapons inspectors and on weakening the sanctions.

Vincent acknowledged in his statement violating the law but said he was motivated by concern about the impact of the sanctions on the Iraqi people.

“I hope that my guilty plea and my agreement to assist the Department of Justice in investigating these matters will help not only the United States but also the Iraqi people as they struggle to rebuild their nation,” he said.

Vincent faces as long as 28 years in prison on charges that include conspiracy to act as an unregistered Iraqi agent, actually acting as such an agent, violation of Iraqi economic sanctions and related violations of U.S. tax laws. Cooperation could reduce his sentence, however.