Oil For Food Scandal; Texas Oil Man David Chalmers Indicted

According to Fox News, David Chalmers, head of Texas based BayOil and two other individuals have been indicted.

U.S. Attorney David N. Kelley scheduled a 10:30 a.m. EDT news conference Thursday with an FBI official to announce the unsealing of the indictment, which his office said also named two companies operated by the formally unidentified Texan.

The kickbacks involved funds otherwise intended for humanitarian relief, Kelley with conspiracy to act in the United States as an unregistered government agent for the Iraqi government’s effort to create the oil-for-food program, the statement said.

Maybe now that an American and from Texas for that matter has been indicted the rest of the MSM and world media can put pressure on the UN and Kofi Annan to come clean. This is a scandal of momentous proportion that the UN has dragged its feet on this issue. The Oil For Food Scandal among many others should have forces Kofi Annan to resign.

The United States and other U.N. member states have refused to fully cooperate with investigators looking into corruption in the oil-for-food program in Iraq, blocking access to information about politically sensitive actions of Security Council nations.

Its about time we get to the bottom of this entire matter and hold everyone’s feet to the fire that was involved. The UN looked the other way and purposely so as individuals gained kick backs and Saddam Hussein became even richer at the expense of the Iraqi people. How is it that a UN program designed to aid the Iraqi people could have been so mismanaged and full of graft that the Oil For Food ended up doing just the opposite from what it was intended? It was either incompetence, corruption or both. There are no clean hands in this and heads should roll starting from the top down.

UPDATE: AP

If convicted of the charges, Chalmers, Irving and Dionissiev each could face a maximum of 62 years in prison and a maximum fine of $1 million. The defendants could also be forced to make restitution.

UPDATE 2: From CNN, in a perfect call from the above post. Read through the CNN account of today’s indictment and notice you will not find one reference to the “UN Oil For Food Scandal” by name except,

NEW YORK (CNN) — For the first time, an American businessman and company have been indicted in a federal investigation of the United Nations’ Iraq oil-for-food program, law enforcement sources said Thursday.

Also there is not one reference to Kofi Annan’s name. Nice critical, cutting edge journalism CNN.