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US Senate: Galloway Took OFF Money
Hussein rewarded two veteran UK and French politicians by allowing them to collect profits as middlemen in oil sales, a new US Senate report claims. The Senate names British MP George Galloway and former French minister Charles Pasqua, but gives no evidence either actually received money. Saddam Hussein "used the programme to reward his political allies like Pasqua and Galloway," Sen Norm Coleman said. Mr Galloway and Mr Pasqua both deny being involved in Iraqi oil sales. "I have never traded in a barrel of oil," said Mr Galloway, formerly a Labour member of parliament but re-elected as a MP for his own Respect party last week after campaigning against the Iraq war. He told the BBC it was "patently absurd" to think that, as an MP being closely watched by UK security services, he could have become an "oil billionaire" on the sly. And he blasted the Senate investigation, which he said had never written to him, spoken to him, or responded to his offers to testify. "This cannot possibly be called an investigation," he said. "This is a lickspittle Republican committee, acting on the wishes of George W Bush." Both Republican and Democrat senators signed the report, which followed a year of inquiries by the Senate's permanent subcommittee on investigations. Mr Pasqua - a French senator who served as interior minister in the 1980s and 1990s - has not yet commented on the document. But when a former aide was questioned over the scandal last month Mr Pasqua said that he had never taken part in any sales. Mr Pasqua is currently a French senator, granting him immunity from criminal prosecution. The report by a Senate committee investigating the oil-for-food scandal says Saddam Hussein's regime was keen to gain allies with influence abroad. It alleged that Baghdad had given Mr Pasqua the right to buy 11 million barrels of oil, while Mr Galloway had received an option on some 20 million. Middlemen could collect commissions of 3 to 30 US cents per barrel of oil, the report says. The committee says it has evidence from documents drawn up by the Ministry of Oil under Saddam Hussein and interviews with "high-ranking Hussein regime officials". The oil-for-food programme was a $60bn (£32bn) scheme set up in 1996 which was supposed to allow Iraq to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies with the proceeds of regulated oil sales. The programme aimed to relieve the suffering of Iraqis under the sanctions and was formally ended in 2003 after the US-led invasion of Iraq. Questions over the way the programme was conducted emerged in early 2004, after an Iraqi newspaper published a list of about 270 people including UN officials, politicians and companies it alleged may have profited from the illicit sale of Iraqi oil. US Senate investigators later found that Saddam Hussein's regime made $17.3bn from abuses. About $13.6bn allegedly came from selling oil to neighbour states keen to breach the sanctions. The programme has already been the subject of several corruption investigations. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has been criticised over his son's work with the programme, but he himself, in an interim report by a UN committee issued in March, was cleared of wrongdoing. Mr Galloway won a libel suit against London's Daily Telegraph newspaper over an article relating to his alleged role in the oil-for-food programme. The Senate report said the documents it used to make the allegations "have no relation" to those discussed in the Daily Telegraph piece. For his part, Mr Galloway said: "These are the same false allegations which are still the subject of a libel action with the Daily Telegraph - so far I'm £1.6m up".
Posted by: Pherens Uloluque1563 2005-05-12 |
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