An Indian official who headed the United Nations' procurement office has been convicted of helping a friend win U.N. contracts worth $100 million in exchange for a massive discount on two upscale Manhattan apartments, free first-class airline tickets, cash and a laptop. Sanjaya Bahel was convicted on Thursday by a New York jury of bribery, wire fraud and mail fraud and faces up to 30 years in prison.

Bahel headed the U.N.'s commodity procurement section from 1999 to 2003. According to prosecutors, he gave his friend, Miami-based Nishan Kohli's company, Thunderbird Industries, and other firms he represented, an inside track in bidding for U.N. contracts. Bahel has maintained his innocence since his arrest in November. He will be kept in prison until his sentencing, which has been set for September.

Reacting to Bahel's conviction, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed satisfaction that "justice had been done." Ban, through his spokesperson in New York, said: "Such acts tarnish the reputation of the organisation, and the tens of thousands of UN employees who work honourably and honestly."

Robert Appleton, chairman of the U.N. procurement task force, said: "There was $100 million in contracts at issue, it was a product of fraud." Asked to specify a dollar figure of the cost of fraud to the U.N., he said, "We've had several cases in which there has been significant loss and waste."

Earlier, Kohli, Bahel's former co-defendant, had pleaded guilty to bribery and testified in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that Bahel was so helpful to the Kohlis in securing about two dozen contracts that he was "effectively a partner in our companies in terms of how we operated and executed contracts."

Bahel met Kohli's father, Nanak Kohli, when both of them worked in Washington in the early 1980s. Nishan said Bahel spoke with his father frequently, and that to hide the frequency of the conversations from scrutiny, the family gave Bahel a cell phone.

The Kohlis let Bahel rent the two Manhattan apartments at a huge discount and later sold these to him at a price well below the market value. Kohli also admitted bribing two U.N. procurement officers with a night on the town that cost him $6,000 and included a strip club visit and a hotel room with prostitutes.

Defence lawyer accused the United Nations of framing Bahel in a "witch-hunt" at a time when the world body was faced with criticism over corruption in the Iraq oil-for-food programme.