US Senator Norm Coleman’s Last Words On George Galloway
DO I file this under Big Brother or just open the window and shout?
BRITISH PARLIAMENT RECOMMENDS SUSPENSION FOR GALLOWAY FOR MISCONDUCT IN OIL-FOR-FOOD PROGRAM
Report includes Galloway-Hussein meeting transcript on oil dealings, Coleman’s Subcommittee findings key to Parliament censure
July 17th, 2007 – Washington, D.C. – The United Kingdom House of Commons Committee on Standards and Privileges has released a report today concerning MP George Galloway and his misconduct related to the Oil-for-Food Program. The Parliament report was highly critical of Galloway’s activities related to the Program, ruling against Galloway on every charge. Finally, the Committee recommends that he be suspended from the House of Commons for eighteen working days – which is reportedly “one of the most severe [penalties] given to an MP” – and requests that he apologize for his misconduct. In arriving at its conclusions, the Committee relied in large part on evidence gathered by the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, then chaired by Senator Norm Coleman.
“I applaud the Committee for its diligence. With the release of the report, the U.K. Parliament becomes the fourth official entity to conclude that Galloway, through his political campaign, received financial support from the Hussein regime and that support was obtained from Oil-for-Food deals,” said Coleman.
Notably, the U.K. report includes a document that provides even further evidence that Galloway was knowledgeable about and participated in nefarious transactions related to the Program. The report has released the minutes of a meeting between Galloway and Saddam Hussein that occurred on August 8, 2002, in which Galloway discusses with Hussein and Tariq Aziz certain Iraqi oil deals – in clear and unmistakable terms. He specifically mentions how certain unidentified problems with oil prices are affecting “our”‘ income and “our dues.”
“This document confirms what we’ve known all along: Galloway was neck-deep in the Oil-for-Food deals, he kowtowed to Saddam Hussein, and his bombastic denials were nothing more than a web of misleading statements. This report clearly shows he was trying to mislead the Subcommittee in his 2005 testimony and tried to create the impression that he did not benefit in any way from any Iraqi oil deals. The evidence shows that Galloway tried to mislead us when he denied knowing that his Jordanian business agent was doing oil deals with Iraq, when he denied knowing that some deals resulted in donations to his political campaign, the Mariam Appeal, and when he denied communicating with Saddam Hussein and Tariq Aziz about oil allocations. The evidence also shows that those claims are simply not true. These findings should put to rest any suggestion that Galloway did not know about these oil transactions and that he had no idea his wife and his political campaign were getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in oil money,” Coleman said. “In fact, the evidence shows that he solicited such favors from the Hussein regime. As Parliament’s report states, he at best turned a blind eye, and ‘on balance, was likely to have known and been complicit in what was going on.’ He will undoubtedly resort to his old tactics and claim that these are fraudulent documents, but the evidence shows that he is flat wrong. The avalanche of credible evidence against him is just never-ending.”
“In response, Galloway will huff and puff, but he can’t blow away the facts of this report. In fact, the house is falling down around him and he will be suspended from the Parliament because of his transgressions,” Coleman added.
During Senator Coleman’s tenure as Chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the Subcommittee issued a detailed report in October 2005 that presented bank records establishing that Galloway’s wife received roughly $150,000 directly from an Oil-for-Food oil deal. The Subcommittee’s report also presented detailed documentation proving that the Mariam Appeal, the political organization Galloway portrayed as a children’s charity, received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Oil-for-Food transactions. The U.N.’s investigators, the Independent Inquiry Committee, found that Galloway’s wife received approximately $120,000 from a different transaction under the Program and that the Mariam Appeal also received massive cash transfers funds from Oil-for-Food transactions.
More recently, the U.K. Charity Commission concluded that the Mariam Appeal improperly received at least $376,000 from Oil-for-Food deals. The Charity Commission also chastised Galloway, along with the other trustees of the Appeal, saying that they “did not properly discharge their duty of care as trustees to the Appeal in respect of these donations,” and concluded that, having considered the totality of the evidence before it, that Galloway may also have known of the connection between the Appeal and the Program.
They’ve met before
Posted: 17th, July 2007 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
