New York, April 2 (Agencies): A former UN procurement official from India has been sentenced to eight years and one month in prison for helping a friend secure at least $50 million in contracts in return for financial favours, including a luxury apartment.

Sanjaya Bahel, 57, was sentenced yesterday in a Manhattan federal court where he was convicted last June on charges of fraud and accepting payments for steering contracts to two companies represented by long-time family friend Nishan Kohli. He has been in jail since then.

“All that I have has been lost,” Bahel told US district judge Thomas Griesa while pleading for permission to return to India to be with his wife, two sons and elderly parents. “I stand before you, a devastated and broken man.”

But Griesa said the UN relied on individuals like Bahel to have “its operations conducted in an honest manner”.

During the trial, prosecutors said Bahel gave inside information and expert advice to help secure contracts for two companies — the Indian government-owned Telecommunications Consultants India Ltd and Thunderbird Industries LLC — represented by Kohli.

In return, prosecutors argued, Bahel was awarded 10 per cent of Kohli’s profits earned through UN business, first-class plane tickets and reduced prices first as tenant, then as buyer, of a $1.5-million luxury apartment close to the UN headquarters in Manhattan.

The judge said the value of the favours and benefits to Bahel was at least $400,000.

Bahel’s lawyer Richard Herman had accused prosecutors of a “witch-hunt” against Bahel aimed at repairing the public relations damage done to the UN in other scandals, including the Iraq oil-for-food investigation.

Kohli, who pleaded guilty in exchange for leniency, is expected to be sentenced in a month. He testified during the trial that he gave Bahel cash and the apartment deal and also paid off other officials with visits to strip clubs and prostitutes.

Kohli, who stays in Miami, testified that his family secured about two dozen UN contracts, capitalising on a relationship that began when Bahel met his father Nanak Kohli while working in Washington in the early 1980s.

Bahel served as the chief of the commodity procurement section in the procurement division of the UN from 1999 to 2003.

On Bahel’s conviction, UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said he was “satisfied that justice has been done”.

Prosecutors sought a harsher sentence of at least 10 years’ imprisonment, but the judge said his “immediate reaction” was to reject that as too high.