Ashcroft Files Criminal Charges in Oil-For-Food

From CNN:

U.S. government sources said that Iraqi-American Samir Vincent was expected to plead guilty to tax violations and engaging in activities as an unregistered agent of a foreign government.

Vincent runs Phoenix International, a northern Virginia firm that reportedly paid $162.2 million for 4.1 million barrels purchased between 1997 and 2000, according to studies by the CIA-backed Iraq Survey Group (ISG) and by the U.N.-appointed Independent Inquiry Committee, led by former federal reserve chairman Paul Volcker.

The ISG report last October by former Iraq weapons inspector Charles Duelfer found that Vincent purchased an additional 3.8 million barrels for himself between 1998 and 2002.

UPDATE 4:25 pm central: My initial reaction - while other countries and organizations argue about whether the scandal even exists, we have already obtained a guilty plea. As we have seen with the Abu Ghraib case, Americans are not immune from misconduct...nor are they out of reach of the long arm of the law.