A former United Nations official convicted by a US court of money-laundering in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal has been transferred to his native Russia, the Russian foreign ministry said Wednesday.

Vladimir Kuznetsov, who was convicted in March 2007 of laundering more than 300,000 dollars (240,000 euros), arrived in Moscow on Tuesday and is currently being held in a Russian jail, the ministry said in a statement.

`We are pleased that it was successful,` the statement said of the transfer, adding that this was the first time that Russia was implementing a Council of Europe convention on the transfer of prisoners dating back to 1983.

`This was also helped a lot by close cooperation between the justice ministries of Russia and the United States, as well as the assistance of the US State Department,` the statement continued.

The foreign ministry said Kuznetsov has nearly another 16 months to serve.

Kuznetsov was arrested by US authorities in September 2005 after the then-UN Secretary General Kofi Annan agreed to waive his diplomatic immunity.

Kuznetsov was convicted of laundering kickbacks obtained by another Russian diplomat, former UN procurement officer Alexander Yakovlev, who was charged with bribery by a panel investigating the oil-for-food scandal.

The affair concerned corruption in the UN`s oil-for-food programme, which allowed Baghdad to sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods the country lacked due to sanctions imposed on the government of Saddam Hussein.

The programme ran from 1996 until 2003, when US-led forces invaded Iraq to oust Saddam. Russia was critical of the oil-for-food inquiry, which also named Russian companies, and alleged that some of its documents were falsified.