Galloway facing fresh oil-for-food allegations

Galloway and Pasqua have denied any wrongdoing in the oil-for-food programme.

“This report exposes how Saddam Hussein turned the oil-for-food program on its head and used the programme to reward his political allies like Pasqua and Galloway,” Republican Norm Coleman, chairman of the Senate’s permanent subcommittee on investigations, said in a statement.

The oil-for-food programme was designed to let Saddam’s government sell oil in exchange for humanitarian goods to help the Iraqi people cope with UN sanctions imposed in 1991 following Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait.

But Saddam manipulated the multi-billion-dollar programme to earn illegal revenues and peddle influence, by awarding former government officials, activists, UN officials and journalists vouchers for Iraqi oil that could then be resold at a profit.

Coleman’s committee said Pasqua had received allocations worth 11 million barrels from 1999 to 2000, and Galloway received allocations worth 20 million barrels from 2000 to 2003.

The allegations against Pasqua and Galloway, both outspoken opponents of UN sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, have been made before, including in a report last October by US arms inspector Charles Duelfer.

But Coleman’s report provided several new details. It also included information from interviews with former high-ranking officials now in US custody, including former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan.

New evidence suggests that a children’s leukaemia charity founded by Galloway was in fact used to conceal oil payments.

Coleman claimed Saddam also approved Pasqua’s allocations himself. The report cites Ramadan as saying in an interview that Galloway was allocated oil “because of his opinions about Iraq”.

The report includes what Coleman said was a copy of a contract from Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organisation that mentions Mariam’s Appeal, a fund Galloway established in 1998 to help a four-year-old Iraqi girl suffering from leukaemia, Mariam Hamze.

It says the fund may have been used to conceal the transfer of three million barrels of oil.

Coleman’s subcommittee said the evidence it found against Galloway was different from documents reported in The Daily Telegraph newspaper in April 2003 alleging that he took money from Saddam’s regime.

Galloway filed a libel suit over the story and won £750,000 (€1.1m) from The Daily Telegraph last year.

Galloway also accepted undisclosed damages and a public apology from The Christian Science Monitor over an article it published alleging he took money from Saddam’s regime. That report was based on documents that later proved to be forgeries.

Galloway, who was expelled from the Labour Party after urging British soldiers not to fight in Iraq, won re-election to parliament last week.

As for Pasqua, the report claims the State Oil Marketing Organisation wrangled with one of his aides over the best way to deliver oil allocations to him.

SOMO wanted it done through a French company, but Pasqua’s aide, Bernard Guillet, insisted it be done through a Swiss company called Genmar, Coleman’s committee said. The organisation requested a letter to that effect.

“According to SOMO, Guillet refused to send such a letter, explaining that ’they cannot do that fearing political scandals,'" the report said.

Genmar was eventually approved and SOMO went on to allocate millions of barrels of oil to it, Coleman claimed.

The report said Guillet received five million barrels. Guillet is currently under investigation in France for suspected influence-peddling and receiving misappropriated funds.

Coleman’s subcommittee is one of several US congressional bodies investigating allegations of wrongdoing in oil-for-food.