Posted on 07/17/2007 10:56:44 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
July 17th, 2007 - Washington, D.C. - The United Kingdom House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges has released a report today concerning MP George Galloway and his misconduct related to the Oil-for-Food Program. The Parliament report was highly critical of Galloway's activities related to the Program, ruling against Galloway on every charge. Finally, the Committee recommends that he be suspended from the House of Commons for eighteen working days – which is reportedly "one of the most severe [penalties] given to an MP" – and requests that he apologize for his misconduct. In arriving at its conclusions, the Committee relied in large part on evidence gathered by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, then chaired by Senator Norm Coleman.
"I applaud the Committee for its diligence. With the release of the report, the U.K. Parliament becomes the fourth official entity to conclude that Galloway, through his political campaign, received financial support from the Hussein regime and that support was obtained from Oil-for-Food deals,” said Coleman.
Notably, the U.K. report includes a document that provides even further evidence that Galloway was knowledgeable about and participated in nefarious transactions related to the Program. The report has released the minutes of a meeting between Galloway and Saddam Hussein that occurred on August 8, 2002, in which Galloway discusses with Hussein and Tariq Aziz certain Iraqi oil deals – in clear and unmistakable terms. He specifically mentions how certain unidentified problems with oil prices are affecting "our"' income and "our dues."
"This document confirms what we've known all along: Galloway was neck-deep in the Oil-for-Food deals, he kowtowed to Saddam Hussein, and his bombastic denials were nothing more than a web of misleading statements. This report clearly shows he was trying to mislead the Subcommittee in his 2005 testimony and tried to create the impression that he did not benefit in any way from any Iraqi oil deals. The evidence shows that Galloway tried to mislead us when he denied knowing that his Jordanian business agent was doing oil deals with Iraq, when he denied knowing that some deals resulted in donations to his political campaign, the Mariam Appeal, and when he denied communicating with Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz about oil allocations. The evidence also shows that those claims are simply not true. These findings should put to rest any suggestion that Galloway did not know about these oil transactions and that he had no idea his wife and his political campaign were getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in oil money," Coleman said. "In fact, the evidence shows that he solicited such favors from the Hussein regime. As Parliament’s report states, he at best turned a blind eye, and ‘on balance, was likely to have known and been complicit in what was going on.’ He will undoubtedly resort to his old tactics and claim that these are fraudulent documents, but the evidence shows that he is flat wrong. The avalanche of credible evidence against him is just never-ending.”
“In response, Galloway will huff and puff, but he can’t blow away the facts of this report. In fact, the house is falling down around him and he will be suspended from the Parliament because of his transgressions,” Coleman added.
During Senator Coleman's tenure as Chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the Subcommittee issued a detailed report in October 2005 that presented bank records establishing that Galloway's wife received roughly $150,000 directly from an Oil-for-Food oil deal. The Subcommittee's report also presented detailed documentation proving that the Mariam Appeal, the political organization Galloway portrayed as a children's charity, received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Oil-for-Food transactions. The U.N.'s investigators, the Independent Inquiry Committee, found that Galloway's wife received approximately $120,000 from a different transaction under the Program and that the Mariam Appeal also received massive cash transfers funds from Oil-for-Food transactions.
More recently, the U.K. Charity Commission concluded that the Mariam Appeal improperly received at least $376,000 from Oil-for-Food deals. The Charity Commission also chastised Galloway, along with the other trustees of the Appeal, saying that they "did not properly discharge their duty of care as trustees to the Appeal in respect of these donations," and concluded that, having considered the totality of the evidence before it, that Galloway may also have known of the connection between the Appeal and the Program.
The report is at the top of the list.
Conduct of Mr George Galloway
The House of Commons Standards and Privileges Committee
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmstnprv.htm
I’d say “its about time” but we aren’t much better at bringing our public scoundrels to justice quickly.
.. the Committee recommends that he be suspended from the House of Commons for eighteen working days – which is reportedly “one of the most severe [penalties] given to an MP” – and requests that he apologize for his misconduct.
Finally, we get more of the picture...always in there, thick as thieves, arab thieves
no wonder he was so supportive
as the saying goes...follow the money
Summary of Conclusions
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmstnprv/909/90905.htm#a66
if the report is accurate, 18 days suspension is a joke.
Not bad, but if Galloway were conservative I'm sure they'd have shot him.
Another story our MSM won’t cover because of the implications.
Tim Russert and Larry King should demand he show up on MTP and CNN and explain things.
So.....his punishment is a two and a half week vacation?
‘Tim Russert and Larry King should demand he show up on MTP and CNN and explain things.’
ROTFLMAO! Larry King probably doesn’t know about any of this, and Russert won’t do anything between now and November of 2008 that will hurt the political party he’s worked his entire adult life for incessantly.
You have a better chance of bin Laden converting to Catholicism.....
18 days?
Suspend him from within the tower of london via a nice piece of rope.
And also assuming that he issues one at all.
I wonder if any of them will come out and apologize now.
Such swift justice. /sarcasm
He should go to jail.
Churchill would have had him shot.But then things have changed there since Sir Winston held power.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.