Quote of note:

...A federal grand jury in Manhattan charged that David B. Chalmers Jr., founder of Houston-based Bayoil USA Inc. and Bayoil Supply & Trading Limited; Ludmil Dionissiev, a Bulgarian citizen who lives in Houston; and John Irving, a British oil trader, funneled millions of dollars in kickbacks through a foreign front company to an Iraqi-controlled bank account in the United Arab Emirates. If convicted, the three men could each be sentenced to as long as 62 years in prison, $1 million in fines, and the seizure of at least $100 million in personal and corporate assets.

American Indicted In Iraq Oil Probe
By Colum Lynch and Michelle Garcia
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 15, 2005; Page A01

NEW YORK, April 14 -- A Texas oil executive, his two companies and two foreign associates were indicted Thursday on charges that they illegally paid millions of dollars to Iraqi officials in exchange for lucrative deals to buy discounted oil from the government of Saddam Hussein.

A separate criminal complaint charged Tongsun Park, a South Korean businessman who was at the center of a congressional influence-peddling scandal in the 1970s, with acting as an "unregistered agent" of Hussein's government and with trying to bribe a U.N. official for relief from economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Thursday's action, announced by David N. Kelley, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, represents the largest round of criminal charges against individuals accused of abusing the $64 billion U.N. oil-for-food program. Samir A. Vincent, an Iraqi American businessman, recently pleaded guilty to illegally lobbying U.S. officials on behalf of Hussein's government and agreed to cooperate with Kelley's investigation.