$1.3 Million Seized From Former U.S. Vice Consul in Guyana

                  By William Claiborne
                  Washington Post Staff Writer

                  CHICAGO, March 20—A State Department officer on home leave from
                  his post at the U.S. Embassy in Guyana has been arrested on charges of
                  amassing more than $1.3 million in cash and gold bars in a conspiracy to
                  sell U.S. visas to foreigners, federal authorities said today.

                  U.S. Attorney Scott R. Lassar said that Thomas P. Carroll, 32, a
                  $50,000-a-year former vice consul in Georgetown, Guyana, was arrested
                  Saturday at his parents' suburban Chicago home as investigators seized
                  more than $500,000 in cash and 10 gold bars worth about $300,000 from
                  safe deposit boxes at Chicago area banks. Lassar said authorities also
                  froze more than $535,000 in 12 bank accounts controlled by Carroll.

                  Authorities said Carroll had tried to arrange the sale of an additional 250
                  visas in coming months for another $1 million before he was arrested in
                  one of the largest State Department bribery cases ever.

                  A Guyanese citizen who allegedly acted as a go-between in the sale of
                  visas--Halim Khan, 36--also was arrested Saturday as he prepared to
                  board a plane in Miami to return to Georgetown, officials said. Both
                  Carroll and Khan were charged with conspiracy to commit bribery and
                  fraud. They were held without bail pending detention hearings in U.S.
                  District Court.

                  Kevin F. Flanagan, special agent-in-charge of the State Department's
                  Diplomatic Security Service here, said the U.S. government does not yet
                  know exactly how many illegal visas were issued to Guyanese citizens and
                  other foreigners. But he said an effort was underway to identify the
                  recipients.

                  Flanagan said he was concerned that many of the fraudulent visas may
                  already have been used and that it will be difficult to track the recipients in
                  the United States.

                  "As far as I know, this is a fairly rare occurrence. It doesn't happen very
                  often," Flanagan said. Richard C. Pilger, an attorney with the Justice
                  Department's Public Integrity Section, said it was "very, very rare to make
                  these kinds of cases."

                  According to affidavits filed with the charges, authorities began
                  investigating Carroll in June, after informants said that they had been
                  solicited for bribes and that Kahn had acted as a broker for the eight-year
                  Foreign Service officer. Officials said the bribes were made over a little
                  more than one year.

                  The complaint alleges that as vice consul and chief of the non-immigrant
                  section of the embassy from March 1998 to March 1999, Carroll had sole
                  responsibility for reviewing and adjudicating visa applications. After he
                  became the embassy's economic and commercial officer in a routine
                  reassignment and no longer dealt with visas, he solicited another embassy
                  employee, who is cooperating in the investigation, to approve visas in
                  exchange for bribes, the complaint says.

                  The affidavits allege that the two officials' conversations were secretly
                  recorded and that early this year Carroll told the informant he would pay
                  for approving visas. He also allegedly promised that when he left Guyana,
                  he would introduce the informant to another local contact to continue the
                  sales.

                  Officials said that in two days in February, Carroll paid the cooperating
                  witness about $40,000 for approving visas and offered to pay $4,000 for
                  each future visa issued to applicants referred by Carroll.

                  The affidavits allege that Carroll made recorded statements in which he
                  discussed the ways he concealed money he removed from Guyana, the
                  large number of fraudulent visas he had issued and his practice of refusing
                  many routine visa applications in order to mask his operation. Carroll was
                  also quoted as boasting that he had collected more than $1 million during
                  his residence in Guyana.

                  Investigators said that Carroll, who had previously served as a diplomat in
                  China, kept some of his records in Chinese as an apparent code. They said
                  they had traced some of his deposits to negotiable instruments purchased
                  in amounts of less than $3,000 each to avoid triggering bank
                  record-keeping regulations. Some of the accounts seized or frozen today
                  were opened using the Internet, officials said.

                  Lassar said that if convicted of the visa fraud charges, Carroll and Khan
                  each face a maximum of 15 years in prison and fines up to three times the
                  amount of the bribes. The maximum sentence for the bribery conspiracy
                  charge is five years and a $250,000 fine. Federal officials said they are
                  seeking to have Khan transferred to Chicago, where Carroll is being held
                  in jail.

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