Ex-U.N. officer pleads guilty

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NEW YORK -- A former U.N. procurement officer was released on bail yesterday after pleading guilty to accepting nearly $1 million in bribes in connection with the corrupt Iraq oil-for-food program.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan hours earlier had lifted Alexander Yakovlev's diplomatic immunity in response to a request by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, said his chief of staff.

Mr. Yakovlev was the first U.N. official indicted in the scandal, which is being investigated by federal prosecutors, several congressional panels and a U.N. commission headed by former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker.

He pleaded guilty to counts of wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering and was released later on $400,000 bond. He faces up to 20 years in prison for each count.

The Volcker commission, in an interim report yesterday, said Mr. Yakovlev had "engaged in a continuous course of conduct of accepting payments from U.N. contractors," going back to at least 2000.

Investigators working for the Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC) said they long have suspected kickbacks in the organization's procurement department, but were only able to identify Mr. Yakovlev this spring.

Mr. Yakovlev, a Russian national, abruptly resigned from the organization in June, but like all officials was covered by diplomatic immunity for the period he worked for the organization.

The U.N. inspector general's office discovered the kickbacks during its own investigations and tipped off federal prosecutors, said Mark Malloch Brown, Mr. Annan's chief of staff.

"Mr. Yakovlev purposefully participated in a corrupt scheme to solicit a bribe" from Societe Generale de Surveillance S.A., or SGS, one of six companies competing for the oil-inspection contract that ultimately was awarded to Seybold, a Dutch firm.

The report also says Mr. Yakovlev "provided confidential bid information, internal assessments and selection consideration to SGS," conduct that violates both the U.N. Charter and internal procurement rules.