Dr Burhan Mahmoud Al-Chalabi

20 April 2006

Q160  Mr Healey: One other thing about the oil contract with Fortum. You said you are a property developer and you did not visit Iraq, I think, between 1969 and 1999.

Dr Al-Chalabi: Because I was terrified from the regime.

Q161  Mr Healey: Yes, of course. When you came to raise money for the mercy flight you started going to oil companies, presumably because trading in oil is one way to raise money to fund this mercy flight. What was your standing or qualification to be involved in oil deals? Do you see what I mean? It seems to be outside your normal work.

Dr Al-Chalabi: You do not need anything. A commission agency is a commission agency. Normally if you are a commission agent you sell shirts, you sell—

Q162  Mr Healey: So you do not need anything?

Dr Al-Chalabi: No. I was a commission agent.

Q163  Mr Healey: Fine; okay.

Q164  Sir Philip Mawer: Can I ask you one final small point on the contract? Were any payments made in connection with the contract out of the commission to Mr Amin?

Dr Al-Chalabi: Is that important for you?

Q165  Sir Philip Mawer: It is alleged in one of the documents that he received some, I think from memory, $15,000 or something. I forget the precise figure.

Dr Al-Chalabi: Dr Amin was, as well as being a compassionate person, he is my friend and he is my relative, and whenever I was with him it was heartbreaking because everywhere he went people would come and ask for help: people who died wanted to be buried in Iraq, students who, because of the war, lost their scholarship, people who had come for medical operations and they have run out of money and they cannot go back, so he was the focal point of all the needy people and I suggested to him that I would make donations to him to help these people, because, you know, the Iraqis are just like the British. We are very proud and this asking is really belittling, and this is why I helped him with that.

Q166  Sir Philip Mawer: Two final questions. Did you ever discuss with Mr Galloway the arrangements you made in relation to the oil contracts you had with SOMO, for which you were the agent?

Dr Al-Chalabi: The image which has been presented about me and Mr Galloway—it is not really. I asked him to help me with the flight. He destroyed the only dream I had. That does not mean I could not admire his work for the Iraqi people, but he and I had really very little in common.

Q167  Sir Philip Mawer: So none of the money that you raised went to him and none of it went to the Mariam appeal?

Dr Al-Chalabi: No.

Q168  Sir Philip Mawer: Right. I do not think I have any further questions to put to you. Is there anything you would like to say to me?

Dr Al-Chalabi: I would like to thank you very much for being courteous and for being honourable because for the last three years certainly my life and those of my family have been made hell with the journalists, with the newspapers, with cars waiting outside my home, with cars at my office. I had to get my family out of the home, all because of that allegation. It was a great opportunity for me to talk to somebody as noble as you are to put my picture because it has been inside me and it has been bothering me and I wanted to talk to somebody but nobody wanted to know the truth as it is and I am very grateful to you.

Q169  Sir Philip Mawer: We have your account now on the record. What we will do is write up the record of our conversation, we will send you the draft of that. You have the opportunity to check it for factual accuracy. If you, on seeing it, think that you want to add to or subtract from an answer, the way you should do that is in a covering letter. In other words, if you want to gloss the verbatim record in some way because you do not think you quite succeeded in making a particular point or whatever, the way to do it is in a letter to me covering the text, not actually correcting the record itself. The record you will get is an accurate account of what has actually passed between us today. I want to conclude by thanking you and Mr Al-Mukhtar for coming this morning, for the information you have given me and for the way in which, with Mr Al-Mukhtar's assistance, you have set out the context in which the allegations which were made about you in the Senate and the Volcker reports, setting out the context in which those allegations have arisen, and I am grateful for that.

Dr Al-Chalabi: I am happy to be of assistance. Thank you very much.

Mr Al-Mukhtar: Can we have a word?

[Dr Al-Chalabi withdrew]

Q170  Sir Philip Mawer: If I may just reach for the relevant papers, just set the context here. You and I met and had a helpful conversation on 1 March, and I subsequently sent you a draft of a record of that conversation which was not drawn up in the same manner as this one will be but was drawn up by a colleague who, as I said in a subsequent letter to you, is well used to making notes of meetings. You made a number of suggestions for altering the record which I have accepted and incorporated in the text.

Mr Al-Mukhtar: I thank you for your letter.

Q171  Sir Philip Mawer: We have now finalised the record of the conversation on that basis. One of the amendments that you made did raise a question in my mind and specifically it related to the following two sentences, and I will read them out if I may so that they are in the record: "PM"—ie me—"said the picture presented was that GG" [Mr Galloway] had been the driving force [in the Mariam appeal] but that he had been assisted in the day to day work by SH [Stuart Halford] and AZ [Dr Amineh Abu-Zayyad]", and you added at that point that you agreed, "AM agreed in respect of SH", Mr Halford. I wanted to be clear what it was you were agreeing about and what you were not agreeing about. The immediate conclusion I drew was that you agreed that Mr Halford had assisted Mr Galloway in the day-to-day work of the Mariam appeal.

Mr Al-Mukhtar: That is correct.

Q172  Sir Philip Mawer: A second possible conclusion is that you did not agree that Dr Abu-Zayyad had assisted Mr Galloway in the day-to-day work of the Mariam appeal.

Mr Al-Mukhtar: That is correct as well.

Q173  Sir Philip Mawer: So you are not agreed that that was correct. And a third possible conclusion was that you had not agreed that Mr Galloway was the driving force of the appeal.

Mr Al-Mukhtar: No, he was.

Q174  Sir Philip Mawer: He was the driving force of the appeal?

Mr Al-Mukhtar: He was the driving force.

Q175  Sir Philip Mawer: I thought that was what you intended but I just really wanted to be clear about it.

Mr Al-Mukhtar: That is correct. I appreciate it. It is principally because at the time when I used to talk to them and go to them I have not seen Dr Amineh Abu-Zayyad in the office, or she was not in the office. I have not seen her do any of the work there, while Stuart Halford, any time and all the time that there were things to do with the Mariam appeal it was always Stuart Halford who was either there or taking part, but not Dr Abu-Zayyad.

Q176  Sir Philip Mawer: Thank you for that. That clarifies the point.

Mr Al-Mukhtar: It is my pleasure.

Q177  Sir Philip Mawer: I did not think it would be difficult to resolve.

Mr Al-Mukhtar: No; you are absolutely right. Thank you very much.