Houston
Two Houston oilmen were formally charged this week with paying “secret kickbacks” to Saddam Hussein’s government in exchange for the right to sell Iraqi oil. The payments should have helped pay for food and medicine for ordinary Iraqis under the United Nations oil-for-food program, which operated from 1996 to 2003 to help Iraqis weather hardships caused by economic sanctions against the regime. But the kickbacks helped Saddam turn the program into a “cash cow masquerading as a humanitarian venture,” said John Klochan of the FBI’s office in New York, where the men, David Chalmers Jr. and Ludmil Dionissiev, were charged. Both pleaded not guilty.
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