do I REALLY have to say it???
Posted on 10/27/2005 4:07:14 PM PDT by 1066AD
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The Times October 28, 2005
UN team links more oil cash to Galloway wife's bank account From James Bone in New York
Amina Naji Abu Zayyad, George Galloway's estranged wife (DWAYNE SENIOR)
::nobreak::GEORGE GALLOWAY faced new questions last night after a UN inquiry tracked additional payments of Iraqi oil money into his wife’s bank account.
Days after a US Senate committee tracked a $150,000 (£84,000) payment to the MP’s now estranged Palestinian wife, the UN inquiry reported that Amina Naji Abu Zayyad had earlier received a series of transfers totalling $120,000.
The revelation increases the pressure on the vocal anti-war politician, whom the report says was nicknamed “Abu Mariam” by the Iraqis, a reference to his anti-sanctions campaign, the Mariam Appeal.
The Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow already faces a parliamentary ethics inquiry and possible criminal charges for making “false or misleading” statements during his celebrated confrontation with US Senators in May.
The new details of Mr Galloway’s alleged involvement in the oil-for-food scandal were contained in a 620-page report issued at the end of an 18-month UN inquiry by a panel led by Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the US Federal Reserve.
The report also contained details of an unexplained payment of 20,000 Swiss francs (£8,800) to the son of Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary- General. And Jean-Bernard Merimée, France’s former UN Ambassador, admitted receiving $165,725 in commissions on an Iraqi oil sale in January 2002 while serving as a special adviser to Mr Annan.
M Merrimée told investigators that Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s former Deputy Prime Minister, had offered him the commissions because he was a “fair negotiator” as Paris’s UN envoy in setting up the oil-for-food system in the mid-1990s.
The report found that Marc Rich & Co financed oil purchases from Iraq and the associated kickbacks for the son of a French MP shortly after the company’s founder received a controversial pardon from President Clinton.
In all, about half the 4,500 companies that bought oil or supplied humanitarian goods under the UN scheme are suspected of having paid illegal kickbacks to the Saddam Hussein government. But only one oil company and 26 humanitarian suppliers actually admitted doing so.
The Volcker report cited Iraqi Oil Ministry records showing that Mr Galloway received allocations of million of barrels of oil to support the Mariam Appeal. Allocations of more than 18 million barrels went to Mr Galloway directly or indirectly through his Jordanian friend Fawaz Zureikat, the report says. Mr Zureikat paid $434,000 to the Mariam Appeal.
The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations alleged this week that Mr Zureikat had also transferred $150,000 to Mr Galloway’s wife on August 3, 2000.
The Volcker inquiry tracks additional payments to Ms Abu Zayyad from a British-Iraqi businessman and prominent supporter of the Conservative Party named Burhan Chalabi. The report says that Mr Chalabi received an allocation of four million barrels of oil from Iraq on December 17, 1999, for “Galloway’s campaign”.
Delta Services, Mr Chalabi’s company, received $472,228 in commission payments on the allocation from the Fortum oil company. “Soon after each deposit, a series of payments totalling over $120,000 were transferred from the Delta Services bank account to the bank account of . . . Mr Galloway’s wife,” the report concludes.
Mr Chalabi also allegedly made two payments totalling over $150,000 to accounts apparently belonging to Mudhafar Amin, then Iraq’s chargé d’affaires in London, Mr Chalabi could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Mr Galloway told the UN panel that his wife denied that she had ever received $120,000 from Mr Chalabi or anyone else. Ms Abu Zayyad told the Senate committee she had never received “any proceeds of any oil deals”.
Yesterday Mr Galloway angrily rejected Mr Volcker's charges that he personally had benefited from Iraqi oil sales and said that he had never heard of Delta Services, which allegedly made payments to his wife. “This is all a tissue of lies and a lie doesn't become a truth through repetition,” he said.
But Senator Norm Coleman, Republican chairman of the Senate committee, noted that the Volcker report “completely supports” the findings of the Senate investigation.
“The [UN] Independent Inquiry Committee relied on parallel information and documents and arrived at the same conclusions we did: Galloway solicited financial assistance from the Hussein regime, his wife received hundreds of thousands of dollars in connection with oil-for-food deals, and his political arm also received hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Senator Coleman said.
The UN panel also tracks a new payment of 20,000 Swiss francs to Kojo Annan, the son of the UN secretary-general, from Cotecna, the Swiss company he helped to obtain a UN contract in Iraq.
The report says $135,000 went from Cotecna to a company called Kynaston Worldwide Ltd, owned by Michael Wilson, Kojo Annan’s childhood friend and fellow Cotecna executive. Two years later, Kynaston transferred 20,000 francs to an account in the name of Vevey Sport, a football club in which Kojo Annan had invested, “for the benefit of Mr Annan”.
Why do I get that feeling that Galloway is going to hide behind his wife's skirt?
The plot thickens. In the end, I am not terribly surprised.
Galloway a thief and a liar, and so is his wife? imagine that.
Troskyite Hitchens must be having a few extra fingers of
Glennlivet tonight savoring the soon to be inmate Galloway
do I REALLY have to say it???
Galloway should do the honorable thing and jump of the London Bridge.
Time for some highly covert action.
NO BLOOD FOR OIL!
No wonder George Galloway and the UN were against the war. They didn't want to lose their "oil for kickbacks and corruption" programs.
How is Galloway subject to US Law. Why is lieing to the senate a crime for an MP?
I don't understand.
LOL! Unfortunately, he's not honorable.
Saddam's MP Gets His (snip)
By Alexis Amory
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 27, 2003
"The British Labour Party has freed itself of one of its most nefarious members. Dapper George Galloway, MP, was born in a Glasglow slum and has since graduated to Armani suits, courtesy of Saddam’s millions, much of it siphoned out of the Oil for Food program. The Labourites have finally cut Galloway out of their party.
The charges, curiously, do not seem to have been related to his consorting with Saddam Hussein’s henchmen through a Jordanian businessman friend of Galloway’s Jordanian scientist wife, nor to any possible misuse of his Miriam Fund. The Miriam Fund was started several years ago to bring an Iraqi girl suffering from leukemia to Britain for treatment. Although the girl had been long since cured and returned to Iraq, the fund nevertheless plowed on, its contributions and income diverted to appeasenik activities on behalf of Saddam’s government and, apparently, to fly George Galloway back and forth to see his sponsors. The Fund is currently under investigation by the Charities Commission..."
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=10518
That may actually make it easier. She'll be in Lebanon, so she won't be able to contradict his false testimony, and he won't care if she goes to jail, so he'll be glad to blame her. If she's as smart as he is, then she's got the money anyway.
gods wounds, but i hope they bag Galloway.
No! I want him to go down. Down with his bloody oil money.
Sigh. Life isn't fair.
The report found that Marc Rich & Co financed oil purchases from Iraq and the associated kickbacks for the son of a French MP shortly after the company’s founder received a controversial pardon from President Clinton.
Uh on..
Uh oh also...:-)
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