Texan tycoon in oil-for-food scandal

A millionaire Texan oilman today pleaded guilty to paying millions of dollars to Iraqi officials to illegally win contracts connected to the United Nations oil-for-food program.

Oscar Wyatt Jr (aged 83), told a 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 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 next month to 18 to 24 months in prison, unless the judge decides otherwise. He also has agreed to forfeit £5.5m (€7.9m).

The UN oil-for-food program, which ran from 1996 to 2003, was created to help Iraqis cope with UN sanctions imposed after Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

It allowed the Iraqi government to sell oil in order to buy humanitarian goods. The program was eventually undermined by corruption as Iraqi officials began demanding illegal surcharges in return for oil contracts.

During the trial, prosecutors showed Wyatt had such a close relationship with Iraq that he was able to meet personally with Saddam in December 1990 to argue for the release of Americans being held as potential shields in the event of a US-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 governor 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 program and to continue to receive oil deals after other American companies were shut out prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Wyatt’s lawyers argued 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.