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NEW YORK -- A Texas oil executive, his two companies and two foreign associates were indicted Thursday on charges they illegally paid millions of dollars to former Iraqi officials in exchange for lucrative deals to buy discounted oil from the government of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

A separate criminal complaint charged Tongsun Park, a South Korean businessman at the center of a congressional influence-peddling scandal in the 1970s, with acting as an "unregistered agent" of Saddam's government and trying to bribe a U.N. official for relief from economic sanctions imposed on Iraq after its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Yesterday's action, announced by David Kelley, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, represents the largest round of criminal charges against individuals accused of abusing the $64 billion U.N. oil-for-food program. Recently, Samir A. Vincent, an Iraqi American businessman, pleaded guilty to illegally lobbying U.S. officials on behalf of Saddam's government and agreed to cooperate with Kelley's ongoing investigation.

The oil-for-food program was created in December 1996 to offset the consequences of sanctions by allowing Iraq to sell oil to purchase food, medicines and other humanitarian goods. It ended after the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. The Iraqi government raised more than $2 billion illicitly through the program, which has become the focus of a U.N. probe, six congressional inquiries and a federal criminal investigation.

A federal grand jury in Manhattan charged that David B. Chalmers Jr., founder of Houston-based Bayoil U.S.A., Inc. and Bayoil Supply & Trading Limited; Ludmil Dionissiev, a Bulgarian citizen who lives in Houston; and John Irving, a British oil trader, funneled millions of dollars in kickbacks through a foreign front company to an Iraqi-controlled bank account in the United Arab Emirates. If convicted, the three men could each face up to 62 years in prison, $1 million in fines and the seizure of at least $100 million in personal and corporate assets.

The federal complaint against Park charges that he received a total of $2 million in cash from Iraq, including a fee to "take care" of an unnamed U.N. official. It also states that Park invested $1 million in Iraqi funds in a Canadian company owned by the son of another unknown, "high-ranking" U.N. official. Park could face up to five years in jail and a fine of up to $250,000 or twice the value of profits he earned as a result of his alleged activities.

"The individuals and corporate defendants charged today reaped huge benefits from the corruption of the oil-for-food program," said FBI acting assistant director John Klochan, who accompanied Kelley at a news conference. "But they didn't merely participate in the illegal scheme. They helped further it."

Chalmers and Dionissiev were arrested at their homes yesterday in Houston and are due to appear today before a federal judge in Manhattan. Kelley's office will seek Irving's extradition from England. A spokeswoman for Chalmers, Catherine Recker, issued a statement saying that he and his two Bayoil companies "will all enter pleas of not guilty."

"We will vigorously dispute the allegations of criminal conduct," she added.

David Howard, an attorney representing Dionissiev, said his client "intends to plead not guilty because he is not guilty."

Robert Luskin, a lawyer at the firm Patton Boggs LLP who is representing Park, said "our client formally denies any wrongdoing." Luskin said he assumed Park is in South Korea, but declined to say whether he would cooperate with federal authorities or surrender.

Efforts to reach Irving in London were unsuccessful.

The federal complaint charges that Iraqi authorities reached an agreement with Park and an unnamed coconspirator, who is cooperating with federal authorities, in October 1992 to lobby U.S. and U.N. officials to grant it relief from U.N. sanctions. Kelley declined to name Park's coconspirator, but court papers released in January said Samir Vincent also engaged in lobbying U.S. and U.N. officials between 1992 and 2003.

Over the following five years, Park presented Baghdad's case to U.N. officials and foreign delegates and solicited as much as $10 million from Iraqi authorities "to take care of his expenses and his people," the complaint said. Iraq ultimately paid Park only $2 million, and Park's coconspirator said some of that money was intended for a U.N. official, the complaint said.

Iraq's relationship with Chalmers predates the imposition of sanctions, and he held a privileged position in Iraq after it halted trade with other U.S. firms to protest U.S. policy against the government.

The indictment said Chalmers advised Iraq on how to keep its oil exports below market rates, so the government could collect more kickbacks. He also sought to persuade U.N. officials responsible for approving the price of Iraqi crude to agree to lower prices, the indictment said.

Chalmers "paid millions of dollars in secret illegal surcharges to the government of Iraq," the indictment stated. The funds went through a "foreign company" that Chalmers set up and sent to a bank account held by a company known as Al Wasel and Babel General Trading, an Iraqi front based in the United Arab Emirates, according to the indictment.

"Chalmers agreed to pay the foreign company inflated commission prices on the original oil transactions, with the knowledge and expectation that the foreign company would then make the surcharge payments to the Government of Iraq," the indictment says.

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