Hakim Gets Probation, $5,000 Fine : Iran-Contra Figure Gives Up $7.3 Million Made in Sales of Arms

A federal judge today placed Iran-Contra figure Albert Hakim on two years’ probation and fined him $5,000. The businessman who controlled the money in the scandal agreed to hand over to the U.S. government $7.3 million from the secret arms sales to Iran frozen in Swiss bank accounts.

U.S. District Court Judge Gerhard A. Gesell imposed probation following Hakim’s Nov. 21 guilty plea to a misdemeanor charge of helping to supplement Oliver L. North’s government salary by arranging to pay for a $13,800 security system at North’s home.

“The American public has had enough of this soap opera,” Hakim said outside the courthouse.

“I have been abused by two Presidents,” he said. “I’m talking about President Reagan and President Walsh,” a reference to independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, who directed Hakim’s prosecution.

Hakim is another in a string of Iran-Contra defendants who have escaped prison time.

“Very substantial funds--measured in the millions of dollars--which have been frozen” in Swiss bank accounts “have now been released to the United States by you,” Gesell announced in the courtroom.

A spokeswoman for Walsh said Hakim will retain $1.7 million, which he will split with his Swiss-based lawyers.

Gesell also said the Iranian-born Hakim had secured the release of David Jacobsen, a U.S. hostage held in Lebanon, and is cooperating with Iran-Contra prosecutors in a new criminal investigative matter.

Gesell noted that Jacobsen, the former hostage, had written the judge on behalf of Hakim. The judge said that while others “have taken credit for” freeing the hostage, it was Hakim’s conduct that actually achieved it.

At the request of the Justice Department, the Swiss government froze about $7.8 million held in accounts of the “Enterprise,” the maze of offshore companies and bank accounts Hakim and his business partner, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord, set up to handle money in the Iran-Contra affair. The money has accrued about $1.2 million in interest.

Hakim’s lawyer, Richard Janis, said the prosecution of Hakim was “an abuse. After 22 months of indictment and expenditure of $100 million, they brought an indictment that no other prosecutor would have taken to court.”

Gesell called Hakim’s assistance to Iran-Contra prosecutors “exceptional” and “in sharp contrast to any other of the defendants who have been at one time or another before me in . . . the Iran-Contra . . . case.”

The judge was referring to North, Secord and former National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter, who is scheduled to go on trial Feb. 20.

“You are the only one who . . . was not an officer or former officer of the U.S. government,” the judge said. “Indeed, you were brought (into the affair) . . . by the U.S. government.”

The judge said that Hakim’s business interests have been hurt and that “you have suffered substantially.”