Free Republic

UK'S GEORGE GALLOWAY REFUTES NEW OIL SCANDAL CLAIMS Mon Oct 24 2005 19:52:44 ET George Galloway has strongly refuted new allegations that he pocketed money from Saddam Hussein's scandal ridden oil-for-food programme and lied about it under oath. The US Senate committee investigating the Respect MP's alleged involvement in the saga claims to have discovered £85,000 (150,000 dollars) in Iraqi oil money in his wife's bank account. Mr Galloway may face criminal charges if found to have given false testimony to the committee when he defended himself against similar claims in a passionate showdown earlier this year. The Senate Permanent...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Things are getting very grim here in Washington. The Democrats are fighting a desperate rear-guard action against the Republicans on several fronts. They are fighting to maintain their death grip on federal judicial appointments. They are resisting Social Security reform. They are using every expedient to scandalize the president's designated UN ambassador, John Bolton. This is not a constructive use of power, for the Democrats have no constructive proposals to advance. It is merely a grim assertion of "no" to the political party now controlling the White House and Capitol Hill. That is why I, as a...

George Galloway conceded last night that intermediaries in his fund-raising activities could have siphoned off money from Saddam Hussein - but insisted he had never done so. As the Labour MP fought to counter allegations that he received up to £375,000 a year from the Iraqi regime, Mr Galloway revealed the full amount given to the Mariam Appeal - the organisation he founded to fly a young Iraqi leukemia victim to Britain for medical treatment and which then became a campaign against Iraqi sanctions - and pledged to release further figures today. Speaking to the Guardian from his holiday home...

Fawaz Zureikat, George Galloway's Jordanian partner who claims not to be involved in oil deals, is closely associated with a company that has traded Iraqi crude valued at millions of pounds, according to United Nations documents seen by The Daily Telegraph. Mr Zureikat has dismissed as a "forgery" an Iraqi intelligence report identifying him as the front man for Mr Galloway's secret contracts to buy Iraqi crude and sell humanitarian supplies under the UN's oil-for-food programme. The Jordanian businessman has repeatedly insisted that he does not deal in oil, although he does sell food and other civilian supplies to Iraq....

From leaky roofs to secret agents: how the files I found in Iraq's looted foreign ministry cast light on the paranoid world of Saddam Hussein How many Iraqi officials does it take to fix the leaky roof of a diplomat's house in London? How long does a skilled translator need to convert one of George Galloway's parliamentary speeches into Arabic? In almost 1, 000 pages of Arabic prose, each stamped with the Eagle crest of Iraq, the files found inside the foreign ministry in Baghdad cast a somewhat surreal light on the questions that turned the bureaucratic wheels of Saddam...

Iraq oil cash funded MPs' campaigns Businessmen handed on money illicitly siphoned from UN deals to pressure groups run by George Galloway and Tam Dalyell David Leigh and David Pallister Tuesday February 17, 2004 The Guardian Money illicitly siphoned from the UN oil-for-food programme by Saddam Hussein was used to finance anti-sanctions campaigns run by British politicians, according to documents that have surfaced in Baghdad. Undercover cash from oil deals went to three businessmen who in turn supported pressure groups involving the ex-Labour MP George Galloway, Labour MP Tam Dalyell, and the former Irish premier Albert Reynolds, it is alleged...

George Galloway yesterday launched an appeal to fund his high court libel battle against two newspapers that claimed he received money from Saddam Hussein's regime. The beleaguered Labour MP urged supporters and sympathisers to back his court action against the Daily Telegraph and the Christian Science Monitor over their allegations, which were based on documents purportedly written by the Iraqi security service. Mr Galloway, MP for Glasgow Kelvin, vehemently denies the claims. He said he "didn't have any choice" but to sue if he was to clear his name, but he was unable personally to finance a defamation case that...

MP's wife introduced him to Saddam sympathiser, writes CAMERON SIMPSON and AARON HICKLIN GEORGE Galloway first met the shadowy figure of Fawaz Zureikat through his Palestinian wife. The fateful meeting was to propel the man who goes under the soubriquets of "Gorgeous George" and the "MP for Baghdad Central" into one of the biggest crises of his colourful career. Dr Amineh Abu-Zayyad, 36, a Jerusalem-born scientist who married Mr Galloway in a secret ceremony in London in February 2000, had gone to the same university in Jordan as Mr Zureikat. Mr Zureikat's name first surfaced in a letter from Mr...

A Jordanian business man, Fawaz Zureikat, whose name was revealed yesterday as an allegedly business intermediary between Labour member of Parliament George Galloway and Saddam Hussain's regime, has been detained in Amman. George Galloway MP, a familiar face to Arab public, is at the top of the news once again, but this time as having been, allegedly, on the pay-roll of Saddam Hussain's regime, at least since 2000. The allegations, claimed to have been uncovered in "secret documents" found by a reporter in two charred boxes at the first floor of the looted foreign ministry in Baghdad are many and...

GEORGE Galloway said last night that he is ready to take on the Labour Party and fight the next election as an independent, as he launched a libel action against claims that he was in the paid service of Saddam Hussein. The maverick Labour MP has said he will make the new Glasgow Central constituency into a stronghold of "real Labour values" if he is thrown out of the party for his attacks on Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, during the Iraq war. As he started legal action against the Daily Telegraph, it last night printed what was billed as...

THE Attorney-General is considering action against the money-raising appeal set up by George Galloway which is at the centre of allegations that he was bankrolled by Saddam Hussein. As the Labour MP began legal action for libel over the claims that he had received £375,000 a year from the Baghdad regime, The Times has learnt that Lord Goldsmith, QC, is studying a separate complaint against him. It is based on an article in The Times showing that Mr Galloway promised to spend all the money raised by the Mariam Appeal on treating sick Iraqi children, but later used it to...

George Galloway, the Labour backbencher, received money from Saddam Hussein's regime, taking a slice of oil earnings worth at least £375,000 a year, according to Iraqi intelligence documents found by The Daily Telegraph in Baghdad. A confidential memorandum sent to Saddam by his spy chief said that Mr Galloway asked an agent of the Mukhabarat secret service for a greater cut of Iraq's exports under the oil for food programme. He also said that Mr Galloway was profiting from food contracts and sought "exceptional" business deals. Mr Galloway has always denied receiving any financial assistance from Baghdad. Asked to explain...