George Galloway Headed for Legal Trouble?

By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross

Andy Cochran has previously written about British MP George Galloway's dual career as politician and terrorist cheerleader. For example, in an early June al-Jazeera appearance, Galloway declared: "Bush, and Blair, and the prime minister of Japan, and Berlusconi, these people are criminals, and they are responsible for mass murder in the world, for the war, and for the occupation, through their support for Israel, and through their support for a globalized capitalist economic system, which is the biggest killer the world has ever known. It has killed far more people than Adolph Hitler. . . . They are the real rogue states breaking international law, invading other people's countries, killing their children in the name of anti-terrorism, when in fact, all they're achieving is to make more terrorists in the world, not less, to make the world more dangerous, rather than less."

Galloway was previously called to testify before the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), where he angrily denied reports that he had profited from the corruption that permeated the UN's oil-for-food program. But now Galloway may be headed for some legal trouble. Days after the PSI tracked a $150,000 oil-for-food payment to Galloway's estranged Palestinian wife, Amina Naji Abu Zayyad, a UN inquiry led by Paul Volcker has tracked an earlier series of transfers to her totalling $120,000. This is another blow for Galloway, who already faces a parliamentary ethics inquiry and possible criminal charges for making "false or misleading" statements in his May Senate testimony. The Times of London explains the Volcker report's findings:

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 [Galloway's anti-sanctions campaign] 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.

Senator Norm Coleman's comment: "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."

If these reports pan out, it will be satisfying to see a toad like Galloway held accountable.

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