Posted on 02/16/2004 7:51:09 PM PST by Pikamax
Special investigation
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 cents a barrel: how Iraqi oil fuelled UK campaigns
Secret commissions paid to pro-Saddam middlemen by western oil firms found their way into George Galloway's anti-sanctions drives
David Leigh, David Pallister, Brian Whitaker, Owen Bowcott, Rory McCarthy in Baghdad, Nick Paton Walsh in Moscow, Jon Henley in Paris Tuesday February 17, 2004 The Guardian
In November 1998, Riad al-Tahir, a businessman of Iraqi origin who lives in Esher, Surrey, arranged a visit to Baghdad by the British Labour MP Tam Dalyell and an Irish delegation led by the former prime minister Albert Reynolds. It was not the first such trip Mr Tahir had fixed up. In 1993, he had taken the anti-sanctions firebrand and Labour MP George Galloway to Iraq along with Mr Dalyell.
On the 1998 occasion, the politicians urged the lifting of sanctions and asserted - correctly as it turns out - that most of Saddam Hussein's weapons had been destroyed as a result of UN inspections.
Mr Tahir got a sizeable reward for his efforts, according to the Baghdad oil list. It records a series of oil allocations to him commencing in November 1998, in the immediate wake of that publicity coup.
Under the UN humanitarian oil-for-food programme, the Saddam regime was allowed to designate companies to which its oil would go. It appears that it granted rights over the oil to its favoured agents.
Mr Tahir told the Guardian that he got the rights to 3m barrels of oil, for which the western oil majors, "Texaco, BP, Shell and Chevron", paid him commission of up to 10 cents a barrel: a sum approaching £200,000.
He agreed that the oil ministry list appeared broadly genuine, but said the quantities were "exaggerated". The list claimed 11m barrels. Mr Tahir denied too that he received the favours after taking the politicians to Iraq. "I was involved before that."
Mr Tahir, who has been running a UK-based Iraqi friendship organisation, Friends Across Borders, emphasised that all the politicians on the trip had paid their own expenses. "The visits were to try to bring some kind of sanity into the situ ation." He said he had originally been working for the Iraqi oil ministry, but left in 1969 when the Ba'athist regime came to power. He has British nationality as a result of his first marriage to a Briton and travelled to Saddam's Iraq about six times a year. "If I'm doing a service, I'm entitled to a reward," he said.
After the Baghdad visit, Mr Tahir said, he became a director of Bula, an Irish oil exploration firm chaired by Mr Reynolds. The company received one further separate oil allocation from Iraq.
Another UK-based "friend of Iraq" now followed in Mr Tahir's successful footsteps. This was Burhan Chalabi, who lives in Richmond, also with a British wife. He has an £11m London property company, and was a stalwart of the Tories in Kensington, donating £5,000 to Michael Portillo's abortive leadership bid.
On December 29 1999, the oil ministry documents of which we possess copies say that Mr Chalabi was granted involvement in the sale of 3m barrels of oil. It was to be sold on to a Finnish oil company, Fortum, which was officially registered with the UN.
Double-decker bus
A Fortum spokesman in London confirmed to us: "We got an approach from Mr Chalabi to assist our application to get oil under the programme... It was agreed he would take a commission in the order of 10c a barrel."
Mr Chalabi was heavily involved with the MP George Galloway, who went to Baghdad that Christmas on a red double-decker bus, to publicise his support for the lifting of sanctions.
The copy of the contract documents says, in a handwritten addition of unknown date, that the Chalabi deal was "for the benefit of Mr George Galloway". Mr Galloway confirmed to us that Mr Chalabi had made "relatively modest" donations to his political campaigns, but nothing to him personally. "I have not received a cent of personal benefit," Mr Galloway said.
He had known nothing of Mr Chalabi's business affairs, he said, although he knew him as a rich man who drove a Rolls-Royce. "I wasn't aware of the oil deal."
Mr Chalabi declined to comment, although he was repeatedly asked to give his side of the story.
In early 2000, his and Mr Galloway's relationship reportedly cooled after a disagreement about the format of a mercy flight to Baghdad. The documents depict Mr Chalabi disappearing from the scene. He was replaced by a Jordanian trader, Fawwaz Zureikat, whom Mr Galloway had already designated as his personal representative in Baghdad.
The files show that Mr Zureikat acted in five oil deals. The first was in the name of Aredio Petroleum, an obscure French firm which had registered with the UN in the hope of getting access to oil. No one responded at its Paris office last week to requests for comment.
The subsequent four deals were in the name of Mr Zureikat's own firm in Jordan, Middle East Advanced Semi Conductor. Each contract appears to have the words "Mr Galloway" or "for the benefit of Mr George Galloway", either in Arabic typing or added in handwriting.
Mr Zureikat was quoted by the AFP news agency in Jordan this week accept ing that he had done these deals. Mr Galloway confirms that Mr Zureikat donated some £400,000 to the coffers of his pressure group, the Mariam Appeal.
Mr Galloway says that although Mr Zureikat's links to Iraq were well-known, he had no specific knowledge that Mr Zureikat had done any oil deals.
All these six deals, if they carried commission at 10 cents, would have netted £1,125,000, or an average of £375,000 a year. But there is no evidence of what money was passed on to the Galloway campaigns, or that any of it ended up in the MP's trouser pocket.
List names companies and governments
United Nations
Benon Sevan, the official who ran the UN oil-for-food programme, and the UN's Dutch inspectors Saybolt are named on the Baghdad oil list. A Mr Sevan is linked to 11.5m barrels in six contracts between 1999 and 2003. Saybolt is named over two contracts totalling 3m barrels in 2000/2001. British businessman Charles Hankes-Drielsma, an adviser to the governing council, said he saw "a receipt for crude oil from a shipping company in Panama which carries the full name of Benon Sevan".
Mr Sevan denied the allegations. Saybolt said: "We have never lifted any oil."
Russia
The "head of the Russian presidential office" benefited from the sale of 5m barrels of oil, the documents claim. This appears to point to Alexander Voloshin, then head of the administration under President Putin. Mr Voloshin declined to comment. So did the Kremlin, saying Mr Voloshin no longer worked there.
The name Azakov, linked to the ministry of oil, is allotted 86.9m barrels. The energy ministry said it had never heard of Azakov. A UN-registered Russian trader called Alpha Eco is linked to the Russian ministry of foreign affairs as being the recipient of rights to 128.8m barrels. Alpha Eco was unavailable for comment yesterday.
South Africa
A group of companies linked to supporters of the ruling ANC are listed in the documents. They were officially registered with the UN as Iraq oil traders. Imvume Management and Montega were companies who received oil allocations. Another former ANC politician, Tokyo Sexwale, is identified in the files. But his connection is unexplained.
The South African government has had friendly relations with the Saddam regime. ANC spokesperson Smuts Ngonyama refuses to discuss ANC income, but denies any wrongdoing.
Switzerland
Among the 47 governments on the list, Switzerland has made the strongest response with a judicial inquiry by the state secretary for the economy (Seco). Othmar Wyss, the Seco official in charge of international commerce, told Le Monde: "The targeted companies would not have received barrels of oil, but would have paid bribes to the Iraqi regime to accede to oil contracts. Should it turn out that they were paid under the table, then we will enter into judicial proceedings against them for violation of the UN embargo."
Bulgaria
The rightwing opposition has called for the resignation of President Georgi Parvanov, leader of the Bulgarian Socialist party until 2001, which allegedly received rights to 12m barrels in 1998. Mr Parvanov told local media: "Not a cent, not any other currency, was received from foreign sources."
Bookmarked for later reading. Added keyword Galloway.
...Galloways ex-chauffeur was often bemused by his attitude to money. His own salary came partly from Galloways legitimate expenses as a Member of Parliament, but also from other sources. Said the ex-chauffeur, "As time went by, [the money] would come from the strangest places.
Usually, his wife [Yassir Arafat's niece] would pay me with checks from a company called Finjan Ltd - a company of which Mr. George and his wife are the only directors." Earlier, he was paid with a check from the Emergency Committee on Iraq and Palestine [a campaign chaired by Galloway, that raised funds among anti-war protesters to campaign against the U.S. and Israel]. The check was signed by Stuart Halford [who was the secretary of the Mariam campaign].
Oddly, there was not a single German company or individual on the payoff list.
Meaning that, while France's vote was bought, Germany apparently objected out of principle.
-MP George Galloway- voice cries "peace," hand in Saddam's till...--
I wonder if the reporters in the American press have been rolling back on their heals for nothing?
Perhaps they learned from their WWII experience not to put stuff in writing!
Some whores do it for free.
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