Smash hit

The documents suggested that, while he was campaigning for the Mariam Appeal, Mr Galloway was conducting a relationship with Iraqi intelligence behind the scenes.

Mr Galloway said that if he had had any dealings with the Oil-for-Food programme, the documentation would be with the United Nations in New York. “The Oil-for-Food programme is run not in Baghdad, but in New York at the United Nations, so they (The Telegraph) are going to have to show the court where the United Nations sent me my cheque, when they did so, why they did so,” he said. “If I had any business dealings with the Oil-for-Food programme, the evidence is with the United Nations in New York.”

The Attorney-General is also looking at a different issue. The Times reported that Mr Galloway started the Mariam Appeal in 1998 with a plea on House of Commons notepaper to potential donors, accompanied by a postcard of Mariam Hamza, 4, an Iraqi girl whose leukaemia was blamed by the MP on uranium-tipped weapons used by the allies in the first Gulf War.

“The Mariam Appeal has had to guarantee the costs of her treatment which could cost up to £50,000. The appeal’s target is £100,000 with the balance being sent back to Iraq in medicines and medical supplies for the children she has had to leave behind,” Mr Galloway wrote.

In fact, the appeal became a broad-based campaign against sanctions, against Israel and in favour of the “Palestinian intifada”. The Register of Members’ Interests shows that Mr Galloway used its funds to pay for 14 overseas trips to 15 countries between September 1999 and January 2002, mostly including flights and hotel bills. He visited Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Lebanon, Hungary, Belgium, New York and Romania. The appeal also paid for him to go to Iraq eight times.

The Treasury Solicitor’s Department is understood to have been asked by the Attorney-General to begin a fact-finding exercise based on the article in The Times. “We are talking to the Charity Commision about whether anything further should be done,” the Attorney-General’s spokesman continued. “It’s at a very, very early stage.”

Mr Galloway said on BBC 2’s Newsnight that the campaign’s accounts would be thrown open for the first time.

He also acknowledged that he had written a “To whom it may concern letter” on his Commons-headed notepaper to certify that a Jordanian businessman, Fawaz Zureikat, was his representative in Baghdad. He said it was a “remarkable coincidence” that a copy had turned up in the same file as a letter said to be from the head of Iraqi Intelligence.

Mr Galloway said: “I have always worked on the assumption, and I think it is a safe one, that the intelligence services know everything about me. They would be aware of such transactions. The fact that there has not been any confirmation from them of this story may well be because they know it is not true,” he said.

Mr Zureikat, 49, said that he acted as co-ordinator for Mr Galloway’s Mariam Appeal in Jordan and Iraq, but denied that he had acted as a broker to any oil deal between Saddam and the MP.

He said: “I was co-ordinator for Galloway’s Mariam Appeal and for all of his work connected to Iraq and his efforts to lobby for lifting the sanctions, but I never traded in oil and never received any (Iraqi) money for Galloway.”

Mr Zureikat, however, shares a telephone number in Jordan with a company that is a major dealer in Iraqi oil — Middle East Advanced Semiconductor — whose directors include a Ziad Abdullah K Zureikat. Diplomats said that this company has lifted 8.8 million barrels of Iraqi oil since registering with the United Nations Oil-for-Food programme in August 2000.

Mr Galloway, on BBC Radio 2, said the Telegraph would not be able to produce a scintilla of evidence “that a single loaf of bread has been sold to Iraq by me or a single barrel of oil has been sold by me from Iraq. I have never seen a barrel of oil, I have never owned one, I have never bought one or sold one, I have never so much as sold a loaf of bread either.”

Mr Galloway said if he had wanted money from the regime he would have asked Tariq Aziz, the Deputy Prime Minister, directly and not gone through a “minion”. He conceded that he could have been in Baghdad with Mr Aziz for Christmas 1999, just over a week before the intelligence memo is dated.

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