Iraq - Galloway's Money Trail

The Times (UK) reports on Galloway's oil money.

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.

And the Telegraph's libel appeal is looking better everyday.

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 plot thickens.

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 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”.

Galloway is still in denial.

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.

I guess George doesn't consider the UN to be a "...lickspittle Republican committee, acting on the wishes of George W Bush."

Note this from that BBC article:

The Senate report said the documents it used to make the allegations "have no relation" to those discussed in the Daily Telegraph piece.

So, the Telegraph has documents, the Senate has documents and now the UN has documents showing Galloway got oil money.

Remember what Galloway said?

“This is all a tissue of lies and a lie doesn't become a truth through repetition,” he said.

But repeatedly finding documentation that you got oil money is the truth George.
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