Supporters of Saddam Suspected in Bribery Scheme

It's always nice to know that we don't have a monopoly on corruption. Note as you read that Pasqua is immune from prosecution and Galloway is not just a crook but a fan of Saddam, Fidel and Arafat. These two will probably walk away from all charges and that of course will encourage others to emulate them. It definitely is a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

Two well-known European supporters of Saddam Hussein received large quantities of oil allocations in a bribery scheme devised under the oil-for-food program to gain political influence, according to a Senate report released yesterday.

Charles Pasqua of France and George Galloway of Britain have both won recent elections to their respective national legislative bodies. The Senate report stated that Mr. Galloway received allocations that amounted to 20 million barrels of oil from Saddam, while Mr. Pasqua got 11 million. An additional 5 million barrels were allocated for Mr. Pasqua's aide, Bernard Guillet.

A former interior minister and a close ally of President Chirac, Mr. Pasqua was recently installed as member of the French senate, where he enjoys immunity from criminal prosecution. Yesterday's report documents his pro-Saddam political activity since the aftermath of the first Gulf War in the early 1990s. Mr. Guillet is currently under police investigation in France.

Mr. Galloway was ejected in October 2004 from Prime Minister Blair's Labor Party, but recaptured a seat in Parliament last week under a new political entity he founded, the Respect Party. His crusade against "Mr.Blair and Mr. Bush's war" became the cornerstone of his campaign. He dedicated his victory speech last week "for Iraq," and went on to rail against "a corrupt political culture."

But according to the report, a charity Mr. Galloway founded for leukemia victims, which he named after a 4-year-old Iraqi girl, Mariam Hamze, was but one component of a scheme to conceal oil allocations Iraqi officials described as a "Saddam bribery system."

The report, presented by the chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Senator Coleman, a Republican of Minnesota, and its ranking Democrat, Senator Levin of Michigan, was based on previously unpublished Iraqi documents and interviews with officials from Saddam's regime.

The report details a system meant to buy influence through allocations of oil barrels allotted to favored world politicians, institutions, and journalists, which Saddam's former vice president, Taha Ramadan Yassin, described as "compensation for support." A "massive portion of the allocations" was steered toward friendly Security Council members such as France, Russia, and China, the report concluded.

Mr. Galloway did not return a call yesterday. In a statement released to the British press, he described the authors of the report as a "lickspittle Republican committee, acting on the wishes of George W. Bush." He denied receiving Iraqi allocations, adding that no one "has acted on my behalf, trading in oil - Middle Eastern, olive, patchouli or any other - or in vouchers, whatever they are."

He claimed he had tried to contact the committee and that it has refused to hear his side of the story. But Mr. Coleman's spokesman, Tom Steward, told The New York Sun that Mr. Galloway has not contacted the committee via "including but not limited to telephone, fax, e-mail, letter, Morse code, or carrier pigeon." He added that Mr. Coleman would be pleased to have Mr. Galloway appear at a Senate hearing scheduled for May 17.

The Senate report includes Mr. Galloway's denials but quotes Mr. Yassin as saying that Mr. Galloway received oil allocations "because of his opinions about Iraq," and specifically for his support of lifting the embargo.

Mr. Galloway won a libel suit in Britain against the Daily Telegraph last year, after an article based on Iraqi Foreign Ministry documents from 1992 and 1993 accused him of accepting bribes. "So far I am [$3 million] up," Mr. Galloway boasted in his statement yesterday. The Senate report, however, says that the documents it referenced date from 2001 and came from the oil ministry.

A message left at Mr. Pasqua's senate office was unanswered yesterday, but in the past, he has categorically denied receiving any oil allocations. The report, however, cites a June 17, 1999, handwritten note indicating that Saddam himself approved allocations to Mr. Pasqua. Later documents show that Saddam's deputy, Tariq Aziz, approved a raise in the allocations. The allocations were concealed through a Swiss company named Genmar, the report says, because Mr. Pasqua "feared political scandals."

The report shows that Saddam used oil for food "to reward his political allies like Pasqua and Galloway," Mr. Coleman said. It paints "a disturbing picture of the dark underside" of the program.

Saddam used oil for food "to reward people he hoped would work against U.N. sanctions," added Mr. Levin, himself a strong opponent of the war. "The United States and other U.N. Security Council members made a fundamental mistake" by allowing him to do so.

See my earlier post on Galloway here.

Article from The New York Sun.