‘Korean Connection’ Tongsun Park Arrested in Houston; Park Was Closely Linked to Resigned U.N. Special Envoy to N. Korea, May Implicate Boutros-Ghali

Months after he was indicted by the feds in New York, oil-for-food bag man Tongsun Park has been arrested.

Tongsun Park, a lobbyist from South Korea who was a central figure in the Congressional bribery scandal in the 1970’s known as Koreagate, was arrested yesterday in Houston on charges that he worked illegally to secure favorable treatment for Iraq under the United Nations oil-for-food program, federal authorities said.

Michael J. Garcia, the United States attorney in Manhattan, announced that Mr. Park was arrested in Houston by F.B.I. agents, but provided no information about how he was found. Mr. Park’s whereabouts had been unknown since he was first indicted on April 14, 2005, for his role in the program.

You can read my original blog post on the indictment here. The original federal indictment is here, courtesy of the Counterterrorism Blog. Later, I described this bizarre report of the Joongang Ilbo actually calling and interviewing Park in Tokyo. That interview fueled some speculation that Park would implicate high U.N. officials, perhaps even Kofi Annan, for taking bribes. The latest New York Times report instead points to Annan’s predecessor, the spectacularly soporific Boutros-Boutros Ghali:

Mr. Park and Mr. Vincent “understood,” the complaint says, that some of the money Mr. Park received from Iraq was to be used to “take care” of the high-ranking United Nations official, who is not named in the court documents.

A separate investigation led by Paul A. Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve, found that Mr. Park and Mr. Vincent had attempted to pass $1 million to Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the former secretary general of the United Nations. But Mr. Volcker’s final report, issued Sept. 7, said there was no evidence that Mr. Boutros-Ghali had received or agreed to receive the funds. Mr. Boutros-Ghali denied receiving any money.

This MSNBC report is also quite comprehensive and describes new charges against Park.

Among those suspected to be an unnamed co-conspirator described in the Park indictment is Canadian power company executive Maurice Strong, a man with ultra-strong connections in the U.N., far-left political beliefs, and financial interests in China. He is also Kofi Annan’s former Special Envoy to North Korea, one who was conspicuously silent on human rights. Strong used Park, who was born in North Korea, as an informal advisor. Park is alleged to have funneled some of his Iraqi millions to Strong’s son. Given Park’s history as a dictator’s bag man, that certainly raises questions about the General Secretariat’s silence on North Korea, although I couldn’t connect the dots any further than to link Tongsun Park to the Moonies, who have some shady business ties of their own (fourth item) to Kim Jong Il.