Oil for Food
Daily Telegraph
On April 22, 2003, the Daily Telegraph published an article describing documents which the paper claimed had been found by its reporter David Blair in the ruins of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. The documents purport to be records of meetings between Galloway and Iraqi intelligence agents, and state that he had received £375,000 per year from the proceeds of the Oil for Food programme [7] (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/04/22/ngall22.xml). Galloway completely denied the story, insisting that the documents were forgeries, and pointing to the questionable nature of the discovery within an unguarded bombed-out building. He instigated legal action against the newspaper, which was heard in the High Court from November 14, 2004 (HQ03X0206, George Galloway MP vs. Telegraph Group Ltd.) On December 2, Justice David Eady ruled that the story had been "seriously defamatory", and that the Telegraph was "obliged to compensate Mr Galloway... and to make an award for the purposes of restoring his reputation". Galloway was awarded £150,000 damages plus costs estimated to total £1.2 million. In UK libel cases, the winning party is also normally awarded costs, with the loser paying the bill. The court did not grant leave to appeal; in order to appeal in the absence of leave, the defendants would have to petition the House of Lords.
The libel case was regarded by both sides as an important test of the Reynolds qualified-privilege defence [8] (http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1999/45.html). The Daily Telegraph did not attempt to claim justification (a defence in which the defendant bears the onus of proving that the defamatory reports are true): "It has never been the Telegraph's case to suggest that the allegations contained in these documents are true" [9] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4061165.stm). Instead, the paper sought to argue that it acted responsibly because the allegations it reported were of sufficient public interest to outweigh the damage caused to Galloway's reputation. However, the court ruled that "It was the defendants' primary case that their coverage was no more than 'neutral reportage' ... but the nature, content and tone of their coverage cannot be so described."
The Daily Telegraph has not published any investigation as to whether their documents were genuine, but a 2005 US senate report [10] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/11_05_05_psi_report.pdf) comments that the original article "apparently included forged documents".
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Others
The Christian Science Monitor also published a story on April 25, 2003 stating that they had documentary evidence that he had received "more than ten million dollars" from the Iraqi regime. However, on June 20, 2003, the Monitor reported that their own investigation had concluded the documents were sophisticated forgeries (http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0620/p01s03-woiq.html), and apologised. Galloway rejected the newspaper's apology, asserted that the affair was a conspiracy against him, and continued a libel claim against the paper. The Christian Science Monitor settled the claim, paying him an undisclosed sum in damages, on March 19, 2004. [11] (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3549679.stm) [12] (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1174073,00.html) It emerged that these documents had first been offered to the Daily Telegraph, but they had rejected them. The documents' origin remains obscure.
In January 2004 a further set of allegations were made in a newspaper called al-Mada in Iraq. The newspaper claimed to have found documents in the Iraqi national oil corporation showing that Galloway received (through an intermediary) some of the profits that arose from the sale of 19.5 million barrels (3,100,000 m³) of oil. Galloway acknowledged that money had been paid into the Mariam Appeal by Iraqi businessmen who had profited from the UN-run programme, but denied benefiting personally, and pointed out that in any case there was nothing illicit about this:
"It is hard to see what is dishonourable, let alone "illicit", about Arab nationalist businessmen donating some of the profits they made from legitimate UN-controlled business with Iraq to anti-sanctions campaigns, as opposed to, say, keeping their profits for themselves."
The report of the Iraq Survey Group published in October 2004 claimed that Galloway was one of the recipients of a fund used by Iraq to buy influence among foreign politicians. Galloway denied receiving any money from Saddam Hussein's regime.
The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards had begun an investigation into George Galloway but suspended it when Galloway launched legal action. On December 14 it was announced that this investigation would resume.
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