SERIOUS Fraud Office investigators are trying to determine whether George Galloway should face charges in connection with the Iraqi Oil-for-Food scandal, it was reported yesterday.

A four-strong team is said to have returned from the US having been given access to thousands of documents, including bank records, relating to the affair. Reports published in America have suggested that large payments, laundered through the Oil-for-Food programme, were made by Saddam Hussein to Mr Galloway’s wife and to his political campaign organisation.

Mr Galloway, who was shut up in the Big Brother house yesterday and thus unable to comment on the involvement of the Fraud Office, has repeatedly denied accepting such payments and last year travelled to the US Senate to defend himself. He is predicted to be evicted from the house tonight.

During his time there Mr Galloway has been ridiculed for pretending to be a cat and for wearing a leotard. His housemates turned on him yesterday after he launched a tirade of insults at fellow contestants. He was seen sitting alone reading the Communist Manifesto.

The Fraud Office’s involvement comes a month after the Charity Commission announ- ced that it had begun a new inquiry into the Miriam Appeal, a fund set up by Mr Galloway to help sick Iraqi children. Investigators, the commission said, had been told to establish if any of the money paid to the appeal originated from the Oil-for Food programme.

A commission spokesman said in December: “The inquiry will also establish what is the legal status of these funds and examine the extent to which the trustees discharged their duties and responsibilities in accepting them.

“This is a different focus from the original inquiries opened in 2003. These inquiries examined how funds donated to the appeal were expended and whether the Mariam Appeal should have been registered as a charity.”

The commission took its decision after reports by the US Senate and the UN Independent Inquiry Committee into Oil-for-Food. Both reports, and the evidence on which they are based, are expected to feature prominently in documents being examined by the Fraud Office.

Previously he has insisted: “How many times must I repeat this: I’ve never had a penny through oil deals and no one has produced a shred of evidence that I have.”

He was expected to miss the court judgment today of the appeal by the Daily Telegraph against the £150,000 libel award it was ordered to pay Mr Galloway, after a jury ruled that it was guilty of libel by claiming in 2003 that Mr Galloway had taken cash from Saddam.

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