Mr George Galloway

24 February 2005

Q280  Sir Philip Mawer: Please.

Mr Galloway: They have appealed. They asked, if you will recall, for 14 days after the delivery of a judgment called Jameel v the Wall Street Journal, which was a case in which the same Judge, Judge Eady had rejected the Reynolds Privilege defence of the newspaper and found for the claimant. So the Telegraph's counsel asked in court to avoid paying me the money until 14 days after the judgment on Jameel. The judgment on Jameel came much later than people expected. It upheld the Judge's finding, found against the newspaper, and 13 days elapsed and then the Telegraph on the last day put in an appeal and that will now—I think technically it is not an appeal, it is a request to be allowed to appeal because they were refused permission to appeal.

Q281  Sir Philip Mawer: Seeking leave.

Mr Galloway: Seeking leave to appeal and this will be dealt with by a judge from the Appeal Court whether or not to give them permission to appeal. And the timescale that we are talking about in that, at its fastest, will be six to eight weeks. You will understand my attention to that detail because I do not get my money either from the Telegraph or the three other awards that I have locked up in my lawyer's office pending the closure of this Telegraph case until that matter is cleared up, so I have rather a lot riding on whether or not they appealed and whether or not they now get leave to appeal. I had hoped to fund my general election campaign from that.

Q282  Sir Philip Mawer: Thank you for letting me know the latest position there. My understanding is that if the Daily Telegraph are given leave to appeal they can only appeal on a point of law and we shall have to see the outcome of the judicial process on that. Obviously that is not a matter in which I would want to interfere in any way. May we just move on to point two in the letter I sent you?

Mr Galloway: Sure.

Q283  Sir Philip Mawer: I think we have dealt with the nature of the complaints process. You have offered me your reflections on it and I have told you I am anxious to get at the truth or otherwise of what has occurred. Possible issues under the Code of Conduct. You will understand that when a complaint comes in to me my job is not only to evaluate the complaint but to evaluate the circumstances surrounding it, the evidence, the information which is available. It was and it remains my judgment that if it were true—a big if and clearly one strongly contested by you—that you had received money from the former Iraqi regime then clearly that would be a breach of the Code. I say that because you would have been less than frank with the House about the influences which might affect the performance of your public duty.

Mr Galloway: Sure.

Q284  Sir Philip Mawer: Equally, it would, in my view, be a breach of the Code if it were the case that you had received indirectly from the Iraqi regime via the Mariam Appeal, or any other organisation, monies which you knew to be coming from the Iraqi regime but which had—if I can use a crude word—been laundered, indirectly sent to you via another organisation. There are a number of possible explanations for what is alleged as a result of the documents which were found by the Daily Telegraph and one of our objects this morning is to explore those, but I just want to make clear to you the respects in which I think that issues about the Code would arise if the circumstances which I have mentioned, and which are clearly the ones which we have got to explore together, were to be true. I say this because I want you to be clear about the respects in which the Code would come into play, in my view, in relation to these matters. I hope what I have said is not contentious.

Mr Galloway: It is hard to hear.

Q285  Sir Philip Mawer: Whether it is true or not is another matter.

Mr Galloway: It is hard to hear words like "laundering" spoken to me but you will no doubt say what you feel you have to say.

Q286  Sir Philip Mawer: You understand what I was trying to say by that?

Mr Galloway: Yes I do.

Q287  Sir Philip Mawer: Money was indirectly sent to you?

Mr Galloway: Yes I do.

Q288  Sir Philip Mawer: If we might come on to the content of the documents discovered by the Telegraph in Baghdad. I will come in a moment when we get to item four to your view about the authenticity of the documents and about the truthfulness of the documents and those are separate questions.

Mr Galloway: They are, yes.

Q289  Sir Philip Mawer: If we may for a moment just address what the documents say or purport to say. I start with the contextual questions, if I may. Have you seen the documents themselves, the originals?

Mr Galloway: There are not originals, they were photocopies.

Q290  Sir Philip Mawer: You have seen the documents that the Daily Telegraph produced, the files? You and I have seen colour photographs of them? You have seen these documents?

Mr Galloway: It is a misnomer to use the word originals; they are all photocopies.

Q291  Sir Philip Mawer: You have seen the documents the Daily Telegraph has?

Mr Galloway: These are photocopies. This is an important point. If you are lingering under the misapprehension that these are original documents that is an important misapprehension.

Q292  Sir Philip Mawer: You had forensic analysis conducted of the documents?

Mr Galloway: You cannot conduct a forensic analysis of a photocopy; that is precisely my point.

Q293  Sir Philip Mawer: They were seen by forensic experts on your behalf?

Mr Galloway: Who concluded they were photocopies. It is not contested that they are photocopies. Why is that important? Because the Christian Science Monitor's documents collapsed precisely because they were not photocopies and could be forensically analysed. The Telegraph documents are photocopies and not subject therefore to any forensic analysis.

Q294  Sir Philip Mawer: The authenticity of some of the documents has not been questioned, indeed has been confirmed in terms of their content. I refer to the letters, for example, from Sir Edward Heath and others.

Mr Galloway: I am not going to comment on anybody else's documents. Some of the documents relating to me are confirmed by me, although I think you in your letter to me have made potentially quite an important error but we might come to that on point six unless you would like me to come to it now?

Q295  Sir Philip Mawer: Please feel free to come to it now.

Mr Galloway: You draw a dichotomy on the subject of the role of Mr Fawaz Zureikat a) as my representative in Baghdad and b) in relation to the Mariam Appeal. If you read the document, it is very clear he is my representative in relation to the Mariam Appeal. There is no dichotomy. He is not a representative of me in more than one capacity; only in that capacity.

Q296  Ms Barry: He also had a role in relation to the Mariam Appeal.

Mr Galloway: That is my point but he was not a) my representative in Baghdad and then b) my representative for the Mariam Appeal. He was only the representative for the Mariam Appeal.

Q297  Sir Philip Mawer: I think that is a point you made before. I had not intended to imply a dichotomy. Are you as a result of what you have just said indicating that that letter[19] appointing Mr Zureikat as your representative in relation to the Mariam Appeal—

Mr Galloway:—is a photocopy of a document that I produced.

Q298  Sir Philip Mawer: But it is an accurate photocopy so far as you are aware?

Mr Galloway: Yes.

Q299  Ms Barry: There is forensic analysis and textual analysis and there are two possible aspects here.