Mr Tony Zureikat

20 December 2005

Q680  Sir Philip Mawer: What you are saying here—and there is evidence of this from the records which have been unearthed by the Volcker inquiry—is that Fawaz did not pay the commission to the former Iraqi regime which he was expected to pay on the early contract and he then held over payment, you are saying I think if I have understood you correctly, in order to facilitate his own financial affairs?

Mr Zureikat: Yes.

Q681  Sir Philip Mawer: When he was under pressure to pay, Fawaz went to Tariq Aziz.

Mr Zureikat: To Tariq Aziz. To ask him for a break.

Q682  Sir Philip Mawer: "May I have more time to pay"?

Mr Zureikat: Yes and he did. He did get more time and he did pay. They would not give him oil shares unless he paid the old one.

Q683  Sir Philip Mawer: So he has to pay the commission on the old contract in order to get any new contracts?

Mr Zureikat: But he did not the first one, they gave him the second one and the second one paid the first one so he is even.

Q684  Sir Philip Mawer: Understood.

Mr Zureikat: Like I said, technically it is the money up to that time and that is where the newspaper lost the case with George Galloway. Until the beginning of 2000, January, Fawaz had bounced cheques all over Jordan. The money started coming from agriculture in the first 700,000 they got from Shanti. Then they start getting contracts from the Ministry of Trade for milk, blah-blah, food, rice, whatever and he got those shares in return for the Mariam Appeal under George Galloway.

Q685  Sir Philip Mawer: Let me just establish, we will talk about the oil in a minute, but what you have just touched on is the humanitarian contracts from the Ministry of Agriculture and others which you say your cousin Fawaz secured, and what I have got in front of me here is one of the documents produced by the independent inquiry.

Mr Zureikat: The Volcker Commission.

Q686  Sir Philip Mawer: Yes, which has a table which shows Middle Eastern Advanced Semiconductor Incorporated securing contracts worth over $20 million in milk, detergent, soap and—

Mr Zureikat:—Vegetable oil.

Q687  Sir Philip Mawer: Vegetable oil or ghee?

Mr Zureikat: Yes and some of those contracts have never been executed or delivered and they had to perjure papers during the fall of the regime during the first month and Shanti and Fawaz went to Egypt and went to Rome and fixed papers and bought people from the UN programme and they got paid for all of that including ten per cent they pocketed.

Q688  Sir Philip Mawer: The ten per cent that you have just mentioned was what?

Mr Zureikat: The kickback.

Q689  Sir Philip Mawer: That was the kickback to the former Iraqi regime?

Mr Zureikat: You could not get a contract without ten per cent added so to get $1 million, you sign a contract for $1.1 million. Before delivery you have to provide a bank guarantee as performance or a bank guarantee as a delivery secured or a bank guarantee for water services, a bank guarantee for whatever, before they sign your acceptance of material, you pay the ten per cent in front of the noses of the United Nation, then they sign "received", then they cash it.

Q690  Sir Philip Mawer: Thank you. Now the—

Mr Zureikat: Can you tell me the dates of those contracts please?

Q691  Sir Philip Mawer: The dates of the contracts are not given in the table which I have in front of me.

Mr Zureikat: You will see all of them are 2002. That is when George became very active at the end of 2001/beginning of 2002. That is where he made several trips to Iraq in 2002. They were rushing for more business from trade, information and agriculture and that is what they got their money from; nothing from oil.

Q692  Sir Philip Mawer: When you say nothing do you literally mean nothing or do you mean by comparison with the humanitarian contracts they got little?

Mr Zureikat: No, it is just you get an oil contract like yourself, like a contractor, you sell the oil, you get as an individual the money in your bank and somehow you send it back to Saddam. It all gets paid back to Saddam.

Q693  Ms Barry: All of it?

Mr Zureikat: All of it except five per cent which is a small fee to do that transaction but all the money went in cash to Saddam. That is the point everybody is missing. Fawaz did not sell the oil and go through all this hassle for a return of five cents.

Q694  Sir Philip Mawer: What did he go through it for, in your view?

Mr Zureikat: Just to give the money back to Saddam. In return he gets those contracts.

Q695  Sir Philip Mawer: Can I just play back to you what I understand. We know from the enquiries of the UN Committee and others that—

Mr Zureikat: $200 million.

Q696  Sir Philip Mawer:—that the former Iraqi regime paid those people it thought were sympathetic to it, it arranged for them to have allocations of oil, which they went out on to the market and sold on, if you like. And they made a commission on that, part of which they were entitled to keep, part of which they had to pay back under the surcharge arrangement to the former Iraqi regime. What I understand you to be saying is that Fawaz (because we know it on the record that something in the order of 18 to 20 million barrels were made available to Fawaz) received that money, the commission as it were, on the contracts, he paid what he had to pay to the Iraqi regime in order to get more contracts for oil. That money, though, was relatively small, the commission he received, in comparison with the much bigger money—

Mr Zureikat: Not to Fawaz, to Saddam.

Q697  Sir Philip Mawer: Indeed, but the much bigger money was available through the humanitarian contracts, the other contracts?

Mr Zureikat: Yes, Fawaz is a front. He is making the deals and he is profiting from more money. Fawaz is getting only five cents from the whole transaction. The rest of the transaction is technically between the Iraqis and the buyers. It is just using Fawaz as a bridge because they do not want the United Nations to discover the Iraqis selling oil behind their backs. It was just Fawaz getting the oil share, selling the oil, whatever, and from the oil transaction Fawaz was making five cents, although once he may have made seven cents.

Q698  Sir Philip Mawer: Are you aware, though, of what he was doing with that money? It is alleged—indeed there is evidence now in the UN Committee report and in the Senate report—that money was transferred by Fawaz to the Mariam Appeal.

Mr Zureikat: Yes to Amineh and mostly he paid Amineh in cash. Did you get the Senate report?

Q699  Sir Philip Mawer: Yes.

Mr Zureikat: There are some transaction slips, transfer slips to Amineh.