Stabroek News
April 8, 2001

Thomas Carroll, the former US diplomat charged in the United States in connection with a visa scam which he perpetrated during his tour of duty in Guyana pleaded guilty on Friday.

He had been charged with three counts of bribery, producing false visas and conspiring to commit visa fraud, and according to a report yesterday in the Chicago Sun Times, following his guilty plea in a Chicago courtroom he faces at least five and a half years in prison when he is sentenced in July.

The daily also reported that he had agreed to forfeit all of the money and goods the government said he had received from the bribes, even although while admitting he had bribed an embassy official to get visas approved, he had not admitted taking bribes himself.

According to the report, Carroll had pleaded guilty without cutting a deal with prosecutors on a recommended sentence.

From March 1998 Carroll was vice consul at the US embassy in Georgetown with responsibility for the review of visa applications. The following year he was appointed economic and commercial officer and visa matters ceased to come under his purview. He is accused of attempting to bribe his successor as vice consul, Benedict Wolf, to approve 250 visas. Unknown to him, however, the latter was co-operating with the authorities.

The Sun Times reported that Carroll had made a fake videotape of Wolf offering him bribes, which he then turned down. The former diplomat, said the daily, had a degree from Northwestern University, and his diplomat's salary in Georgetown had amounted to US$49,000 per annum. He was alleged to have amassed $2.5 million in cash, and $300,000 in gold bars from his illegal activities, and was also said to have had money in two off-shore bank accounts.

Carroll was arrested in Chicago on March 17 last year.