GEORGE GALLOWAY faced new questions last night after a UN inquiry tracked additional payments of Iraqi oil money into his wife’s bank account.

Days after a US Senate committee tracked a $150,000 (£84,000) payment to the MP’s now estranged Palestinian wife, the UN inquiry reported that Amina Naji Abu Zayyad had earlier received a series of transfers totalling $120,000.

The revelation increases the pressure on the vocal anti-war politician, whom the report says was nicknamed “Abu Mariam” by the Iraqis, a reference to his anti-sanctions campaign, the Mariam Appeal.

The Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow already faces a parliamentary ethics inquiry and possible criminal charges for making “false or misleading” statements during his celebrated confrontation with US Senators in May.

The new details of Mr Galloway’s alleged involvement in the oil-for-food scandal were contained in a 620-page report issued at the end of an 18-month UN inquiry by a panel led by Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the US Federal Reserve.

The report also contained details of an unexplained payment of 20,000 Swiss francs (£8,800) to the son of Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary- General. And Jean-Bernard Merimée, France’s former UN Ambassador, admitted receiving $165,725 in commissions on an Iraqi oil sale in January 2002 while serving as a special adviser to Mr Annan.

M Merrimée told investigators that Tariq Aziz, Iraq’s former Deputy Prime Minister, had offered him the commissions because he was a “fair negotiator” as Paris’s UN envoy in setting up the oil-for-food system in the mid-1990s.

The report found that Marc Rich & Co financed oil purchases from Iraq and the associated kickbacks for the son of a French MP shortly after the company’s founder received a controversial pardon from President Clinton.

In all, about half the 4,500 companies that bought oil or supplied humanitarian goods under the UN scheme are suspected of having paid illegal kickbacks to the Saddam Hussein government. But only one oil company and 26 humanitarian suppliers actually admitted doing so.

The Volcker report cited Iraqi Oil Ministry records showing that Mr Galloway received allocations of million of barrels of oil to support the Mariam Appeal. Allocations of more than 18 million barrels went to Mr Galloway directly or indirectly through his Jordanian friend Fawaz Zureikat, the report says. Mr Zureikat paid $434,000 to the Mariam Appeal.

The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations alleged this week that Mr Zureikat had also transferred $150,000 to Mr Galloway’s wife on August 3, 2000.

The Volcker inquiry tracks additional payments to Ms Abu Zayyad from a British-Iraqi businessman and prominent supporter of the Conservative Party named Burhan Chalabi. The report says that Mr Chalabi received an allocation of four million barrels of oil from Iraq on December 17, 1999, for “Galloway’s campaign”.

Delta Services, Mr Chalabi’s company, received $472,228 in commission payments on the allocation from the Fortum oil company. “Soon after each deposit, a series of payments totalling over $120,000 were transferred from the Delta Services bank account to the bank account of . . . Mr Galloway’s wife,” the report concludes.

Mr Chalabi also allegedly made two payments totalling over $150,000 to accounts apparently belonging to Mudhafar Amin, then Iraq’s chargé d’affaires in London, Mr Chalabi could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Mr Galloway told the UN panel that his wife denied that she had ever received $120,000 from Mr Chalabi or anyone else. Ms Abu Zayyad told the Senate committee she had never received “any proceeds of any oil deals”.

Yesterday Mr Galloway angrily rejected Mr Volcker's charges that he personally had benefited from Iraqi oil sales and said that he had never heard of Delta Services, which allegedly made payments to his wife. “This is all a tissue of lies and a lie doesn't become a truth through repetition,” he said.

But Senator Norm Coleman, Republican chairman of the Senate committee, noted that the Volcker report “completely supports” the findings of the Senate investigation.

“The [UN] Independent Inquiry Committee relied on parallel information and documents and arrived at the same conclusions we did: Galloway solicited financial assistance from the Hussein regime, his wife received hundreds of thousands of dollars in connection with oil-for-food deals, and his political arm also received hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Senator Coleman said.

The UN panel also tracks a new payment of 20,000 Swiss francs to Kojo Annan, the son of the UN secretary-general, from Cotecna, the Swiss company he helped to obtain a UN contract in Iraq.

The report says $135,000 went from Cotecna to a company called Kynaston Worldwide Ltd, owned by Michael Wilson, Kojo Annan’s childhood friend and fellow Cotecna executive. Two years later, Kynaston transferred 20,000 francs to an account in the name of Vevey Sport, a football club in which Kojo Annan had invested, “for the benefit of Mr Annan”.

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