Dr Burhan Mahmoud Al-Chalabi

20 April 2006

Q140  Sir Philip Mawer: Could I ask why it was the only arrangement you had? In a way, it is a little odd. If I could explain what I mean by that, if we look at the published SOMO records, the same names tend to appear in them regularly. Few people feature only once and, given the humanitarian work which you were doing for the people of Iraq, and given your opposition to sanctions, it was perhaps surprising that you were not given other opportunities to earn commission which you could use for these purposes.

Dr Al-Chalabi: I only wanted to raise money for the mercy flight, and when the mercy flight was cancelled that was my only objective. Whatever donation to the work I did, I did from my own resources and I am privileged in this country to have had business opportunities where I can afford that.

Mr Al-Mukhtar: Dr Chalabi tried with a number of companies, as he mentioned, some people to do with education, some with health, et cetera. He made various approaches with various companies but in the nature of things the only one which materialised was this deal. The other ones did not; they fell through. He could not convince, he could not lobby enough to get them to give the contracts. Otherwise he would have got commission from other contracts. Principally he did not want at that period of time to do commercial work with Iraq because he felt that this is people who are trying to enrich themselves at a time when the Iraqis were suffering, so he was against the idea except that is why this commission, when he took it, was for the purpose of humanitarian rather than for his own commercial benefit. He did not have to give it to anybody. Nevertheless, he did try, as he mentioned earlier, a number of companies but that is the only one which materialised.

Q141  Sir Philip Mawer: This was the one that….

Mr Al-Mukhtar: Came through.

Dr Al-Chalabi: I do not know as to why my name has appeared in those documents. I do not know whether the documents are genuine or not but I really was very surprised when you sent me the papers. I do not know why my name was on here.

Q142  Sir Philip Mawer: The explanation presumably is that you were the agent and in that context your name was on the documents.

Dr Al-Chalabi: Other people may have used my name for their personal gains. I do not know, but really I was very surprised when you sent me the document. I was astonished.

Q143  Sir Philip Mawer: What would they have gained from that?

Dr Al-Chalabi: If they say, "This is for Dr Al-Chalabi" they give them more contracts, they benefit and I would not know anything about it, would I?

Q144  Sir Philip Mawer: No, but given that you only appeared once and given that you actually—

Mr Al-Mukhtar: This is not contested.

Dr Al-Chalabi: No, because you said that I appeared more than once.

Q145  Sir Philip Mawer: No, no. I was about to make the point—I made the point in reverse, actually. You did not appear more than once. You only appeared once.

Dr Al-Chalabi: My apologies.

Q146  Sir Philip Mawer: What I was saying to you was that most people's names appear more than once and it was therefore in a way odd that you only appeared once in the list, and I asked the question did you have other opportunities.

Dr Al-Chalabi: I never asked for any other opportunities.

Q147  Sir Philip Mawer: You say you never asked and Mr Al-Mukhtar on your behalf—

Mr Al-Mukhtar: He is talking about the oil, but he said earlier that he went to the Chinese and the Europeans, so you did ask, but not for oil.

Q148  Sir Philip Mawer: You approached other companies, as you said earlier.

Dr Al-Chalabi: Yes.

Q149  Sir Philip Mawer: And you would have been content to act as their agent had they given you that opportunity, if it had produced money to assist the humanitarian flight which was your objective?

Dr Al-Chalabi: Absolutely.

Q150  Sir Philip Mawer: But the only company that came forward was Fortum.

Mr Al-Mukhtar: That is right.

Q151  Sir Philip Mawer: And it was in that context therefore that the contract proceeded. Your name appeared in relation to the contract which Fortum had with SOMO.

Dr Al-Chalabi: That is correct.

Mr Al-Mukhtar: This is where the misunderstanding of the reports, both the UN and the Americans, where they have taken the names of the people who have written on the side of the list as being the beneficial owners. We have seen this even with the bigger picture when the Russian Republic has taken money and then it turned out to be the name of the individual as if this contract has gone to them, the same thing with other countries, but this is not really the inquiry.

Q152  Sir Philip Mawer: No, but, to be fair, the allegation which is made is not that people whose name appeared on the list were the beneficial owners of the contract in the sense that the contract was made and executed with them. It is rather that they were the commission agents whose names appeared in relation to the contract.

Mr Al-Mukhtar: With respect, I hate to differ but this is not the general tone of the Senate and the UN. It is those people who got the money. They were referring to it as allocations, contracts with. It was nobody else talking about agents, a commission agency, because a commission agency is not against the law. Even if you have the cases, whether in France or Italy or any other country, people who took commission agency were not breaking any law of any country, but the thrust of both reports is twisting the neck of the truth to make it as if these contracts were for them. Anyway, I think we are going a little bit….

Q153  Sir Philip Mawer: If I may just say, the contracts were effected in a way which enabled the people who were named to receive commission payments from the companies which actually drew the oil. They did; they received the benefit of the monies.

Mr Al-Mukhtar: You see, at the end of the day this would not have been—for instance, when you have a Mr Galloway, beneficial owner, yes, you have a problem with that, you have to address it, but when you have Dr Al-Chalabi and X and Y and Z, you would not have the inquiry. I am not talking about the House of Commons; I am talking about the US and the UN. If the concern was people were receiving commission agency you would not have these inquiries because most of the people were ordinary people. There were some politicians, French, and, I do not know, Russians, and Mr Galloway; there were names mentioned there, so it was that bit, yes. They are talking about whether—it is irrespective of whether they have got the contract or a commission agency, but the thrust of the whole inquiry is based on the idea that the named people were benefiting, not as commission agents but the contracts for them.

Q154  Sir Philip Mawer: Whatever their status, the allegation is certainly that they benefited but I think we need not get sidetracked into that.

Mr Al-Mukhtar: Absolutely, we do not need to.

Q155  Sir Philip Mawer: Because our focus this morning is Dr Al-Chalabi and the questions that we have of him. I think I am coming towards the end of my questions but I would just like to check that there is no point which I have failed to ask, so if you will give me a moment's pause and I will look to my colleague as well and just make sure that we have not failed to cover something because this is our opportunity, clearly, to put questions to you.

Q156  Mr Healey: There are two things I would like to clear up. Dr Amineh Al-Zayyad's work on depleted uranium—what was the nature of that? Was that scientific research into the effects of depleted uranium or was it humanitarian assistance for the children and people who were affected by depleted uranium?

Dr Al-Chalabi: Her work was really—what she was attempting to do was noble work because she was going to create a database for the areas and, as you know, there was something like three hundred tonnes of depleted uranium, and I believe had that database been prepared not only would that help the Iraqi children; it would have helped the children of the British soldiers who are in Iraq now who, God forbid, will probably suffer the same fate as the Iraqis because the depleted uranium contamination is going into the water, into the soil, into the food. Some of these photographs in here are even of animals.

Q157  Mr Healey: So the nature of the work was compiling evidence of the effect of the use of depleted uranium in Iraq?

Dr Al-Chalabi: As far as I was concerned it was humanitarian work.

Q158  Mr Healey: Yes, of course.

Mr Al-Mukhtar: Could I just give you a little bit of background? Dr Amineh has a PhD from one of the Scottish universities, I do not know whether it is Dundee or another, and her PhD is related to the effect of genetic deformity as a result of this, so she was a scientist who was doing the scientific work, the preparatory scientific work.

Q159  Mr Healey: Before you—and there is no reason why you should—donated money to support her work you do not know how it was funded?

Dr Al-Chalabi: I did not know.