Mr George Galloway

30 November 2006

Q600  Sir Philip Mawer: In effect, are you saying that you were relying on what she had told you about the source of the money?

Mr Galloway: That it came from a trust in Switzerland?

Q601  Sir Philip Mawer: From Dr Al-Chalabi?

Mr Galloway: I was relying on the fact that the source came from Switzerland.

Q602  Sir Philip Mawer: A point in closing, if I may, about the Oil-for-Food Programme. Do you accept that if taken together the Independent Inquiry Committee and the Senate reports provide strong documented evidence that money from the Oil-for-Food Programme was channelled to the Mariam Appeal?

Mr Galloway: Fawaz Zureikat made donations from his personal funds to the Mariam Appeal. How he made them is a matter for him, not me. There was no cheque from the Oil-for-Food Programme, he would hardly have done so. I am not in a position to know how the donors made their money, part of which they donated to our campaign; it was not my business to do so.

Q603  Sir Philip Mawer: You are saying that if it were the case that money from the Oil-for-Food Programme had gone via Mr Zureikat to the Mariam Appeal you have no knowledge of that?

Mr Galloway: The money came from Zureikat, it did not come from the Oil-for-Food Programme. I suspect you may well say he earned this money through his business dealings with the Oil-for-Food Programme, but it is not as true as you think it is. He gave us the money from his personal funds. They did not belong to anyone else's fund, but funds which belonged to him. That is all that matters to me. I was only interested in raising the funds. It was not for me to enquire of the three principal donors how they made their money.

Q604  Sir Philip Mawer: You have no knowledge of it?

Mr Galloway: As I have said to you many times and elsewhere, I had knowledge that he was doing extensive business in Iraq.

Q605  Sir Philip Mawer: Business including the Oil-for-Food Programme?

Mr Galloway: I did not specifically know he was doing oil business. I know now that the oil business was a very small part of the total business he was doing in Iraq but it happens to be the thing that people have fastened their attention on to. I knew he was a big businessman doing business in Iraq before he had ever met me.

Q606  Sir Philip Mawer: There were two aspects of the Oil-for-Food Programme. One was the oil side of the programme and the other was the humanitarian goods side. From the United Nations records, Mr Zureikat appears to have been involved in contracts on both sides of the programme. Were you aware of his involvement in relation to humanitarian contracts?

Mr Galloway: I knew about his infrastructural project with education TV, but define humanitarian.

Q607  Sir Philip Mawer: As the United Nations records state, he was involved in humanitarian goods contracts.

Mr Galloway: If you are calling food humanitarian and if that fell under that rubric, I knew he sold food to Iraq.

Q608  Sir Philip Mawer: Do you think you had any kind of obligation in terms of your position as a public representative and in terms of your obligation to the House of Commons to make an inquiry of Mr Zureikat as to what he obtained and how he obtained it?

Mr Galloway: What I will say on that is what I said two days after The Telegraph attack in the Independent newspaper, that political fund-raising is seldom pretty, and you would be in a good position to know that. Political fund-raising is, by definition, an affair which leaves neither the giver nor the seeker of the funds for political purpose entirely untarnished. It is much more tarnishing for me—and you will have to understand my position to know why—that I asked the King of Saudi Arabia for funds.

Q609  Sir Philip Mawer: This is a point you made when we last met.

Mr Galloway: Yes, but my point is that political fund-raising, whether for elections or political campaigns, requires you to ask people who have got the money to give some of it to you for your political purposes. If the people involved were the same kind of people as you and I, they probably would not have any money. The fact that they have got money shows they are a different type of person. They are involved in different kinds of things and there is always a compromise in going to such people and asking for funds. I will state again, and I have made this point many times, it was not my duty to ask any of the three where they got their money from, no more than it is Charles Kennedy's duty to ask where the donors to the Liberal Democrats made their money or any more than it was the duty of Labour to vet Bernie Ecclestone. I could go on. It is not a pretty business raising money for political purposes. In this case, the political purpose was so vital, so life and death vital, that I was only glad that there was somebody somewhere who was prepared to give us that.

Q610  Sir Philip Mawer: I do not have anything else to put to you on the subject. Do you have anything further you wish to say on this?

Mr Galloway: No.