A UN purchasing official pleaded not guilty on Thursday to buying two luxury Manhattan apartments at drastically cut prices in return for steering more than $50 million in contracts to Indian firms.
US Magistrate Judge Douglas Eaton in federal district court ordered the UN official, Sanjay Bahel, 55, freed on a $900,000 bond. But he required Bahel to put up the apartments as security along with $75,000 in cash and an Acura sport vehicle.
Bahel had been chief of the UN commodity procurement wing and was suspended without pay by the world body on August 31 while investigations were under way. Also arrested, in Miami, was Indian businessman Nishan Kohli, managing partner of Thunderbird Industries, LLC, and an agent for the Telecommunications Consultants India Ltd, an Indian government enterprise. Kohli also pleaded not guilty and was released on $1 million bail in Miami.
According to federal prosecutor Michael Garcia, who charged both men with bribery, Bahel in 2000 or earlier granted "exceptional access" to Kohli, with information on bidding. On occasion, Bahel "even cancelled bids by competing companies and rebid contracts" to give Kohli's business interests a competitive advantage, Garcia said.
Consequently, Kohli secured a number of contracts for TCIL, including radio communications and computer equipment as well as information technology.
In return, the indictment charged, Kohli purchased the two condominium units at the Dag Hammarskjold Towers for $1.24 million in 2003 and provided them to Bahel and his family for two years at greatly reduced rent or no rent at all. In 2005, Kohli sold the units to Bahel for less than $1.2 million, $700,000 below market value, drawing a protest from the building's condominium board, the indictment alleges. Both men face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Bahel's lawyer, Raymond Levites, argued for $500,000 bail and said that his client had complied with a request by UN investigators to cut his trip to India short to return to the United States for more questioning. Bahel was taken into custody on Wednesday on his way to pick up his son from John F. Kennedy International Airport, only because authorities "thought he was going to leave the country," Levites said.
"If he didn't want to face the charges he wouldn't have come back," Levites said.
The United Nations said in a statement on Wednesday that Secretary-General Kofi Annan had received a request from prosecutors in the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York to waive Bahel's immunity and did so.
Bahel, formerly of the Indian government's military auditing service, first came under scrutiny in September 2004 when a UN internal audit investigated contracts he handled. But no action was taken until earlier this year.
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