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UNITED NATIONS - A former Russian top spy says his agents helped the Russian government steal nearly $500 million from the U.N.'s oil-for-food program in Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Among the spies he says he recruited for Russia were a Canadian nuclear weapons expert who became a U.N. nuclear verification expert

He describes a Russian businessman who got hold of a nuclear bomb, and kept it stored in a shed at his dacha outside Moscow.

"It's an international spy nest," Tretyakov said of the U.N., during an interview this week with The Associated Press. "Inside the U.N., we were fishing for knowledgeable diplomats who could give us first of all anti-American information."

Some of the people named or referenced by a code name in the book have denied Tretyakov's claims. The Russian mission to the U.N. said Friday it would have no immediate comment.