A South Korean lobbyist convicted in the U.N. oil-for-food scandal was granted a reduced sentence on Tuesday after cooperating with prosecutors in the investigation and for a medical condition.
U.S. District Judge Denny Chin reduced the five-year sentence for Park Dong-sun to three years and one month and entered the final order into court records in New York.
Park was convicted in July 2006 by a federal jury for acting as an unregistered agent for the former Saddam Hussein regime of Iraq.
The jury found that Park, 72, lobbied high-level U.N. officials to remove sanctions imposed on Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait in 1990. He was accused of receiving at least $2.5 million by the Saddam government for his role.
An internal U.N. investigation report named Park as one of the central figures in the scandal, one of the largest humanitarian programs ever, intended to divert Iraqi oil revenues to buy food and medicine as relief goods for the Iraqi people.
He was sentenced a year ago to five years in prison, but as part of a deal, Park agreed to cooperate with the U.S. government. (Yonhap)