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Alexander Yakovlev was a long-serving tenured member of the United Nations procurement department who was involved in the Oil-for-Food Programme scandal and had other allegations of impropriety.
Yakovlev worked in the UN Secretariat since 1985. In 1993, Yakovlev signed a permanent contract with the UN as a private individual (without secondment by the Russian Federation). [1]
Yakovlev resigned on June 23, 2005. On August 8, 2005, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan waived the diplomatic immunity of Alexander Yakovlev upon a request from the U.S. Attorney's Office, and Yakovlev apparently had been taken into custody, said Mark Malloch Brown, Annan's chief of staff. Yakovlev's case (1:2005-cr-00819) was assigned to Southern District of New York.
The same day he pleaded guilty to wire fraud under the Oil-for-Food Programme, making him the first U.N. official to face criminal charges in connection with the scandal-tainted operation. He was released under bond of $400,000.
Alexander Yakovlev also pleaded guilty in federal court to charges of wire fraud and money laundering for accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from U.N. contractors in his work outside oil-for-food. He could have faced up to 20 years in prison for each of the three counts. His Brooklyn-based criminal lawyer Arkady L. Bukh said it could take several years until Yakovlev was sentenced. On December 22, 2010 he was sentenced to time served, 2 years of supervised release and was ordered to forfeit $900,000. [2] [3]
The diplomat was accused by the investigators of taking nearly $1 million in bribes, which also includes alleged illicit dealings with Compass Group PLC's subsidiary Eurest Support Services (ESS) and its terminated CEO Peter R. Harris and senior executive Andy Seiwert.
Yakovlev is alleged to have conducted himself improperly in 1996 when he indirectly tried to get bribes from Société Générale de Surveillance S.A.
The Oil-for-Food Programme (OIP) was established by the United Nations in 1995 to allow Iraq to sell oil on the world market in exchange for food, medicine, and other humanitarian needs for ordinary Iraqi citizens without allowing Iraq to boost its military capabilities.
Benon Vahe Sevan was the head of the United Nations' Oil-for-Food Programme, established in 1996 and charged with preventing Iraq's government from using the proceeds from oil exports for anything but food, medicine and other items to benefit the civilian population.
Compass Group plc is a British multinational contract foodservice company headquartered in Chertsey, England. It is the largest contract foodservice company in Europe, ahead of Sodexo, employing over 500,000 people. It serves meals in locations including offices and factories, schools, universities, hospitals, major sports and cultural venues, mining camps, correctional facilities and offshore oil platforms. Compass Group is listed on the London Stock Exchange, and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index and is also a Fortune Global 500 company.
Tongsun Park was a South Korean lobbyist. He was involved in two political money-related scandals: Koreagate scandal in the 1970s, and the Oil-for-Food Program scandal of the 2000s. Park had a reputation as the "Asian Great Gatsby".
Michael Scanlon is a former communications director for Rep. Tom DeLay, lobbyist, and public relations executive who has pleaded guilty to corruption charges related to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal. He is currently assisting in the investigation of his former partners Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed by separate state and federal grand jury investigations related to the defrauding of American Indian tribes and corruption of public officials.
Philip Bloom is an American businessman who pleaded guilty on April 18, 2006 to conspiracy, bribery and money laundering in connection with a scheme to defraud the Coalition Provisional Authority – South Central Region (CPA-SC) during the occupation of Iraq. According to the Sydney Morning Herald Bloom used CPA funds to pay out over $2 million USD in bribes, in cash, real estate, designer cars, watches, and the services of prostitutes he brought to Bagdad. Bloom accepted at least $1 million in bribes and stole a further $600,000 in cash and goods from CPA funds.
Operation Ill Wind was a three-year investigation launched in 1986 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation into corruption by U.S. government and military officials, and private defense contractors. Charles "Chuck" Duff was the sole Air Force Action Officer responsible for developing, coordinating and implementing Air Force actions relating to the Department of Justice's "Ill Wind" procurement fraud investigation. Government officials, private individuals and companies were eventually convicted of various crimes including nine government officials, 69 Washington consultants and 7 military contractors, as well as executives at GE, Boeing and United Technologies.
Eurest Support Services (ESS) is a subsidiary of the catering company Compass Group PLC specializing in harsh-environment large-scale food service and facilities management. Its primary clients are military forces and other security services, major defense contractors, and construction, mining, and oil exploration and production facilities worldwide.
The investigations in Jack Abramoff led to several plea agreements by those involved, including Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH). Abramoff himself also pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges, including tax fraud and bribing public officials. Abramoff's activities also became an issue that many Democratic candidates raised in the November 2006 House and Senate elections, as the challengers painted the incumbent Republican Congress as corrupted by Abramoff and his powerful allies. On March 29, 2006, Abramoff was sentenced to five years and ten months in prison and ordered to pay restitution of more than $21 million.
The Oil-for-Food Program Hearings were held by the U.S Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations beginning in 2004 to investigate abuses of the United Nations (UN) Oil-for-Food Programme in which the economically sanctioned country of Iraq was intended to be able to sell limited amounts of oil in exchange for vital food and medicine for its population.
The Cockerham bribery case involved the investigation and subsequent trials of United States Army contracting officers and their family members who were accused of accepting bribes in return for steering multimillion-dollar contracts to companies providing services for the US Army in Iraq and Kuwait between 2004 and 2007. The alleged ringleader of the accused officers was US Army Major John L. Cockerham, who was sentenced to 17 and 1/2 years in prison for accepting bribes from Army contractors. The contracts, mainly for bottled water, involved at least three US Army contracting officers, two of their family members, six companies from India, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the United States, and up to $15 million in bribe money.
Operation Big Coon Dog was an investigation by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) into alleged corruption surrounding the use of federal and state disaster recovery funds by public officials in Buchanan County, Virginia, United States, following severe flooding in the town of Hurley in May 2002. The investigation resulted in the criminal conviction of sixteen people, including several public officials and other government employees, on charges of bribery and fraud. It has been called the largest public corruption case in western Virginia in decades and a step towards uncovering a "dark culture of corruption in Buchanan County".
Samir Vincent also known as Samir Ambrose Vincent is an ethnic Assyrian Iraqi American that pleaded guilty in January 2005 to being an unregistered agent for the Iraqi government and reselling oil from the Oil-for-Food Programme to "reap profits totalling millions of dollars". Earlier in his life, he was an Olympic sprinter, hurdler, and triple jumper for Iraq at the 1964 Summer Olympics.
Carmelo G. Garcia is an American politician, life coach and convicted felon from the state of New Jersey. He represented the 33rd Legislative District in the New Jersey General Assembly as part of the Democratic Party for one two-year term. In June 2024, he pleaded guilty to federal wire fraud and bribery charges related to his time working for the Newark, New Jersey, city government from 2017 to 2019.
Arkady L. Bukh is an American criminal defense attorney. He is best known for representing Azamat Tazhayakov, a college student charged with conspiring to obstruct justice and obstructing justice with the intent to impede a terrorism investigation in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing.
In 2015, United States federal prosecutors disclosed cases of corruption by officials and associates connected with the Fédération internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the governing body of association football, futsal and beach soccer.
The Fat Leonard scandal is an ongoing investigation and prosecution of corruption within the United States Navy during the 2000s and 2010s. It has involved ship support contractor Glenn Defense Marine Asia (GDMA), a Thai subsidiary of the Glenn Marine Group. The Washington Post called the scandal "perhaps the worst national-security breach of its kind to hit the Navy since the end of the Cold War." The company's chief executive, president, and chairman, Malaysian national Leonard Glenn Francis, bribed a large number of uniformed officers of the United States Seventh Fleet with at least a half million dollars in cash, plus travel expenses, luxury items, parties and prostitutes, in return for classified material. The classified information included the movements of U.S. ships and submarines, confidential contracting information, and details about active law enforcement investigations into Glenn Defense Marine Asia.
Operation Varsity Blues was the code name for the investigation into the 2019 criminal conspiracy scandal to influence undergraduate admissions decisions at several top American universities.
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