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British Lawmaker Denies Senate Accusations
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| Contributor | Imperator |
| Last Edited | Imperator May 17, 2005 01:29pm |
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| Category | Statement |
| Media | Website - Yahoo News |
| News Date | Tuesday, May 17, 2005 07:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | WASHINGTON - British lawmaker George Galloway vehemently rejected a U.S. Senate subcommittee's claim that Saddam Hussein ever awarded him lucrative allocations under the U.N. oil-for-food program and accused its chairman of maligning his good name.
The subcommittee, chaired by Minnesota Republican Norm Coleman, claimed that Galloway allegedly funneled allocations through a fund he established in 1998 to help a 4-year-old Iraqi girl suffering from leukemia and received allocations worth 20 million barrels from 2000 to 2003.
"I am not now nor have I ever been an oil trader and neither has anyone on my behalf," Galloway said. "I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and American governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas."
The daylong hearing was reviewing three major reports from the subcommittee of the U.S. Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, which studied in great detail how Saddam made billions in illegal oil sales despite U.N. sanctions imposed in 1991 after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
Galloway and others who received oil allocations, including prominent Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, then paid kickbacks to Saddam as part of the deal, Coleman said. He claimed that Saddam received more than US$300,000 in surcharges on allocations involving Galloway.
"Senior Hussein regime officials informed the subcommittee that the allocation holders — in this case, Galloway — were ultimately responsible for the surcharge payment and therefore would have known of the illegal, under-the-table payment," he said. |
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