"The dark underside of the Oil-for-Food Program"

May 14 - (retro-posting) It was worth waiting for:

A longtime ally of French President Jacques Chirac and a leading British critic of the Iraq war received huge contracts to resell Iraqi oil from Saddam Hussein under the U.N. oil-for-food program, Senate investigators have found.

In findings being released today, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs permanent subcommittee on investigations charges that former French Interior Minister Charles Pasqua and British Member of Parliament George Galloway each received the right to market more than 10 million barrels of cut-rate oil from dictator Saddam's Oil Ministry between 1999 and 2003.

Senate investigators, who will air their findings in a hearing next week, based the new report on internal Iraqi documents, Oil Ministry correspondence and interviews with top Saddam-era officials such as detained Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan.

Subcommittee Chairman Norm Coleman, Minnesota Republican, said the findings "paint a disturbing picture of the dark underside of the oil-for-food program." (Emphasis added)

According to FoxNews,

The allegations against Pasqua and Galloway, both outspoken opponents of U.N. sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, have been made before, including in a report last October by U.S. 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 U.S. custody, including former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan.

Among the claims: New evidence suggests that a children's leukemia charity founded by Galloway was in fact used to conceal oil payments.

[...]

The report includes what Coleman said was a copy of a contract from Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organization that mentions Mariam's Appeal, a fund Galloway established in 1998 to help a 4-year-old Iraqi girl suffering from leukemia, Mariam Hamze.

It says the fund may have been used to conceal the transfer of 3 million barrels of oil.

Please note that this is a different set of documents than the forged ones the for which Galloway successfully sued the Daily Telegraph and Christian Science Monitor.

By the way, the Washington Times incorrectly states that Galloway quit the Labour Party; Fox correctly reports that he was expelled.

The transfer of oil to Charles Pasqua was handled by his aide, Bernard Guillet, and there was some wrangling over which bank should deliver the oil allocations.

Guillet has troubles of his own; he is under investigation for influence-peddling and receiving misappropriated funds.

Galloway denies the allegations and last month, the Daily Telegraph was granted permission to to appeal (it's unclear whether they are appealing the ruling or the amount awarded to Galloway, although I believe it is the former.)

The Bethnal Green and Bow MP, who was re-elected to parliament last week running for his own Respect party, described the Senate committee as a "lickspittle Republican committee, acting on the wishes of George Bush".

He said: "Let me repeat. I have never traded in a barrel of oil, or any vouchers for it. I have never seen a barrel of oil apart from the one the Sun newspaper deposited in my front garden.

"And no one has acted on my behalf, trading in oil - Middle Eastern, olive, patchouli or any other - or in vouchers, whatever they are.

"Isn't it strange and contrary to natural justice you might think that I have written and emailed repeatedly asking for the opportunity to appear before the committee to provide evidence and rebut their assumptions and they have yet to respond, while apparently making a judgement."

The Sun is carefully choosing it's words, strictly sticking to the basics of the report (if you've ever read the Sun, you'd know why that is news!)

(This is actually from May 12 - I'm doing some retro-posting to catch up.)

Posted by: Debbye at 07:25 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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