A former United Nations procurement officer pleaded guilty Monday to accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from U.N. contractors, federal prosecutors said.
Alexander Yakovlev also admitted to soliciting a bribe under the U.N. oil-for-food program, making him the first U.N. official to face criminal charges in connection with the scandal-tainted program for Iraq.
He pleaded guilty to all three counts in the indictment - wire fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and money laundering - and could face up to 20 years in prison for each of the charges, the U.S. Attorney's Office said in a statement.
Yakovlev, who lives in the New York City suburb of Yonkers, was taken into custody and released later Monday on a $400,000 bond, with no new court date immediately set, said Megan Gaffney, a spokeswoman for David Kelley, the U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York.
"We decided that it's in the best interest of the client to enter such a plea," Yakovlev's lawyer Arkady Bukh told The Associated Press. "In term of sentencing we expect much better deal if we enter a guilty plea.
The plea came hours after U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan waived Yakovlev's immunity upon Kelley's request.
Earlier Monday, a U.N.-backed probe investigating allegations of wrongdoing in the Iraq oil-for-food program accused Yakovlev of collecting nearly $1 million in kickbacks outside the program. It said he also sought a bribe as part of his work for it.
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