[NYTr] Iraq: Texas Oilman pleads guilty at oil-for-food trial

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP via CNN - Oct 1, 2007
http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/01/news/newsmakers/oil_for_food.ap/index.htm

Texas oilman pleads guilty at oil-for-food trial

As part of a deal, oil mogul Oscar Wyatt Jr. pleads guilty to charges
that he gave money to Iraqi officials to win U.N. oil-for-food
contracts. 

NEW YORK (AP) -- Texas oilman Oscar Wyatt Jr. pleaded guilty Monday to
charges that he paid millions of dollars to Iraqi officials to
illegally win contracts connected to the United Nations oil-for-food
program.

Wyatt told the federal judge in Manhattan that he agreed in December
2001 to advise others to pay a surcharge into an Iraqi account in
Jordan in violation of a program rule calling for no direct payments to
Iraq.

"I didn't want to waste any more time at 83 years old fooling with this
operation," Wyatt said outside court. "The quicker I get it over with
the better."

The plea deal calls for Wyatt to be sentenced on Nov. 27 to 18 to 24
months in prison, unless the judge decides otherwise. He also has
agreed to forfeit $11 million.

The U.N. oil-for-food program, set up to finance Iraqi imports of
necessities, became corrupted in 2000 when Iraqi officials began
demanding illegal surcharges in return for contracts to buy Iraqi oil.
The program ran from 1996 to 2003.

During the trial, prosecutors demonstrated that Wyatt had such a close
relationship with Iraq that he was able to meet personally with Iraqi
leader Saddam Hussein in December 1990 to argue for the release of
Americans being held as potential shields in the event of a U.S.-Iraq
war.

Prosecutors played a tape for the jury of the conversation in which
Hussein promised Wyatt that Americans would be released as Wyatt and
former Texas Gov. John Connally spoke sympathetically about Iraq's
plight.

The government insisted that Wyatt later took advantage of that
relationship to secure the first contract under the oil-for-food
program and to continue to receive oil deals after other American
companies were shut off prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Oil
prices continue slide

Wyatt's defense lawyers argued that their client was an American hero
who never knowingly paid surcharges to the Iraqi government to win oil
deals. They also said he tried to play a peaceful role in resolving
conflict between the two countries.

In his 1990 talk with Hussein, Wyatt could be heard telling Saddam that
he had visited Iraq as many as 40 times in the previous 15 years and
that he was "largely responsible" for a lot of the transactions in
which Iraqis sold one-third of their oil exports to the United States
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