He’s one of Houston’s richest men. Some call him an “oil tycoon.”

But now, jurors in New York are hearing prosecutors call Oscar Wyatt a criminal, a man who they allege did illegal deals with none other than Saddam Hussein.

But Wyatt says he’s the victim of a vendetta.

You know who Hussein was, but what about the man he’s seen shaking hands with in a video from 1990?

He’s Oscar Wyatt, an oilman from Houston.

AP

Oscar Wyatt

You may have heard of his wife: Lynn Wyatt, an international socialite.

But now the cameras are on her husband, and this is no party.

“If the evidence bears that out, I think most jurors in the United States of America would find that rather appalling,” South Texas College of Law professor Adam Gershowitz said.

He’s talking about allegations that before the United States invaded Iraq, Wyatt had been part of a conspiracy to buy oil from the Iraqi government and then kickback millions of dollars into secret accounts that presumably enriched Hussein.

Such payments would have been illegal under what was called the United Nation’s Oil-for-Food program.

It allowed companies to legally buy Iraqi oil, but profits were to go to help the Iraqi people, not Hussein.

The federal government indicted Wyatt, and he’s now on trial in New York.

Newsweek calls it, “A Texas Tycoon’s Final Showdown.”

“Sitting there every day, it’s like hearing these Texas tall tales,” Mimi Schwartz said. “You just can’t believe how dramatic his life is.”

Schwartz is covering the trial for Texas Monthly.

“You’re sitting there listening to these tapes of Wyatt talking to the leader of Iraq, badmouthing the then-president of the United States,” Schwartz said.

Part of Wyatt’s defense has been to blame it on the Bushes. There’s been bad blood between them for years starting out with the first President Bush. Now Wyatt is alleging the Bushes are out to get him.

It may have all started in 1990.

Iraq had invaded Kuwait and taken hundreds of American oil workers, including some from Houston, hostage. Wyatt had been doing oil business in Iraq for years.

Using those ties, he personally went to Iraq to plead directly with Hussein to let the hostages go.

Hussein did, the hostages becoming celebrities, Wyatt the hero but maybe not to the Bush administration.

Wyatt had upstaged the White House.

What’s more, he’d been giving speeches criticizing the Gulf War and Bush, reportedly outraging the president.

And when Bush ran for re-election, Wyatt struck again, endorsing Bill Clinton.

“They’ve never gotten along; there’s pretty bad blood between them,” Schwartz said. “Wyatt has mostly been a Democrat.”

Now, Wyatt’s lawyers are arguing that with George W. Bush in office, the government is putting Wyatt on trial to “silence” and “vindictively punish him.”

His attorneys also said that oil deals that kicked-back money to the government of Saddam Hussein were common and done by hundreds of companies that the government has never prosecuted.

Further evidence they say that Wyatt is being selectively prosecuted.

Will it sway a jury?

“The fact that he’s claiming selective prosecution because they’re out to get him because of his views on Iraq doesn’t legally carry a lot of weight,” Gershowitz said. “But personally, it might carry a lot of weight with one or two jurors.”

Which could mean that the 83-year-old would escape conviction and become the Texas oil tycoon that won the showdown.

Wyatt’s attorneys have yet to put on their case: The prosecution has been presenting its side for two weeks now and the entire trial in New York is expected to continue for about another month.