U.S. Agent Set Up Libya Deal, Accused Supplier Claims

The attorney for a Scottish businessman charged with violating the U.S. embargo on trade with Libya says the only deal the Scot’s firm ever transacted with Tripoli was one arranged and consummated by an undercover U.S. agent.

Patrick Fanning, the New Orleans lawyer representing Francis George Christie of Aberdeen, Scotland, also said this week that a U.S. government trade office in London was responsible for putting Christie’s firm in touch with the Louisiana company that supplied it with American-manufactured equipment sought by Libya for its government-owned oil fields.

After a six-month undercover investigation, U.S. Customs agents last week arrested Christie, 50, a principal in Christie Noble Services Inc., and George and Cheryl Smith of Gretna, La., on charges of conspiring to violate the embargo on trade with Libya imposed by President Reagan last February.

Christie remains jailed in New Orleans, where he is awaiting transfer to San Diego for arraignment on a forthcoming indictment. The Smiths were released on bail a few hours after their arrest last week.

The felony charges against the three business operators were the first filed under the embargo, prompted by terrorist attacks on the Rome and Vienna airports late in 1985. American officials blamed Libya for the attacks, which the United States said were carried out by a radical Palestinian group supported by the regime of Col. Moammar Kadafi.

Federal prosecutors allege that the Smiths’ company, Oil Patch Production Services Inc., purchased equipment from U.S. manufacturers and sold it to the Scottish firm. Christie in turn is accused of supplying the equipment to Libya through two state-controlled companies. Libya’s oil fields, built largely by U.S. oil companies, remain dependent upon U.S.-made spare parts and equipment.

In an interview Tuesday, Fanning insisted that the only business Christie and the Smiths ever transacted on behalf of Libya was a $250,000 deal conceived and closed by an undercover customs agent posing as a salesman for a San Diego manufacturer.

Fanning contends that the prosecution constitutes a classic case of government “entrapment.”

But federal investigators say conversations secretly recorded by the undercover agent make clear that the Smiths and Christie knowingly set out to violate the trade embargo.