Galloway was given Iraq oil allocations, says Senate report

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1401367/posts

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1607720,00.html

May 12, 2005

Galloway was given Iraq oil allocations, says Senate report
From James Bone in New York
Saddam-era officials claim MP's support won him reward
GEORGE GALLOWAY, the MP who taunted the Prime Minister over Iraq after scoring an upset victory in the election, faced fresh accusations last night that he had received oil allocations from the Saddam Hussein regime and may have used his Mariam Appeal charity to conceal payments.

A US Senate committee published evidence from Iraqi documents and interviews with Iraqi officials that the former Labour MP, re-elected to Parliament for his Respect party, received allocations for millions of barrels of oil.

Taha Yassin Ramadan, the ousted Vice-President of Iraq, told Senate investigators last month that Mr Galloway had been granted the oil allocations because of his opinions about Iraq and because he wanted to lift the embargo against the country. Another Saddam-era official told US Treasury Department officials in 2003 that a British MP, identified as Mr Galloway, "benefited tremendously from the illegal trade of oil by Iraq".

"Despite Galloway's denials, the evidence obtained by the sub-committee, including Hussein-era documents from the Ministry of Oil and testimony from senior Hussein officials, shows that Iraq granted George Galloway allocations for millions of barrels of oil under the Oil-for-Food programme," the report said. "Moreover, some evidence indicates that Galloway appeared to use a charity for children's leukaemia to conceal payments associated with at least one such allocation."

Mr Galloway, who overturned a 10,000 Labour majority in Bethnal Green & Bow, dismissed the congressional report last night as a "Republican Party dirty trick". He repeated his earlier denial that he had received any oil allocations from Iraq.

"For the 500th time, I have never seen a barrel of oil, never owned one, never bought one, never sold one, and neither has anyone on my behalf," he said. "The Mariam Appeal's finances were exhaustively investigated by the Charities Commission and nothing improper was found.

"This committee has never written to me, never spoken to me and has not even acknowledged my offer last year to appear in front of them, so it is not much of an investigation."

In December, Mr Galloway won £150,000 in damages and £1.2 million in legal costs in a libel action against The Daily Telegraph for suggesting that he was an agent of Saddam Hussein. The newspaper, which based its reporting on documents that it said were found in the burnt-out Foreign Ministry in Baghdad shortly after the war, is appealing against the decision.

The staff report by the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee of Investigations emphasised that its findings were based on documents that had no relation to the "seemingly forged documents" used in the Daily Telegraph piece, noting that the panel was relying on Iraqi Oil Ministry documents from 2001.

"The Daily Telegraph documents reportedly included allegations that Galloway was on the payroll of the Hussein regime, receiving a salary or direct payments," it said. "In contrast, the evidence examined by the sub-committee indicates that Galloway was granted oil allocations that would have to be monetised through complex oil transactions."

Mr Galloway is allegedly one of hundreds of politicians and other prominent figures in many countries to whom Iraq is said to have awarded oil allocations, which could be sold to oil traders for up to 30 cents a barrel. The Senate report tracks four of the six oil allocations totalling 20 million barrels allegedly given to Mr Galloway between 2000 and 2003.

One transaction in 2001 was described in a letter by the Iraqi state oil marketing organisation as having been signed with "Aredio Petroleum Company (Fawaz Zuraiqat - Mariam's Appeal)".

The report said: "This document indicates that Galloway may have used the charitable organisation to conceal payments from the oil allocation he had received from the Hussein regime."

The appeal was the charity Mr Galloway founded to help Mariam Hamze, a four-year-old Iraqi leukaemia victim, to receive treatment in Britain and which later began lobbying against UN sanctions on Iraq.