A FINANCIAL trail leads from Saddam Hussein’s oil wealth to the travel expenses of George Galloway — at the centre of controversy over allegations that he received large sums from the Iraqi regime — via a pro-Saddam businessman in Jordan.

The Times has learnt that a company owned by the Labour MP’s envoy in Iraq was awarded contracts to ship 16 million barrels of oil under the Oil-for-Food programme.

The company’s owner was one of the main donors to the Mariam Appeal, which paid for the MP’s globetrotting campaign against sanctions against Iraq.

Fawaz Zureikat is named in the purported Iraqi intelligence documents found in Baghdad this week as a middleman in Mr Galloway’s alleged oil deals with Iraq. The documents, dated January 2000, allege that the MP was seeking millions of barrels of oil under the Oil-for-Food programme, using Mr Zureikat as his representative. Mr Galloway and Mr Zureikat both strongly deny these claims.

However, a company founded by Mr Zureikat, and according to Trade Ministry registers 90 per cent owned by him, did register with the United Nations as an oil agent in August 2000 and has shipped 8.8 million barrels. It has contracts to ship about twice that amount.

The barrels were worth between $316 million (£199 million) and $154 million, depending on the oil price. It is unclear how much profit the company made.

It is called Middle East Advanced Semiconductor and is a legitimate business based in Amman, founded on May 9, 1990, with capital of £10,000.

Mr Zureikat was a leading light in Mr Galloway’s Mariam Appeal, a fund that helped an Iraqi girl with leukaemia but which expanded into an anti-sanctions pressure group. He ran a campaign organised by the Mariam Appeal to send academic books to Iraq, in apparent breach of a UN embargo.

In the build-up to war Mr Zureikat was detained in Jordan and held for 27 days for pro-Iraqi political activities.

Mr Galloway named Mr Zureikat as one of three main funders of the Mariam Appeal, whose financial records are secret but which, the MP claimed, raised £1 million in five years, mostly, he said, from Gulf governments.

Mr Zureikat rose to fame in recent years on the strength of his contacts with Iraqi officials. He has been awarded food contracts by Iraq which, like his oil trade deals, are all legal.

Speaking from Amman, Mr Zureikat said: “George has definitely not been involved in taking any money through oil deals, and I was in no way involved in making any arrangements. I have worked in Iraq for 17 years and I have been a strong supporter of what George has done for the country in trying to stop sanctions. But that is all I have done.

“I never traded in oil and never received any (Iraqi) money for Galloway.”

The trader, who is a member of a Christian tribe in southern Jordan, said that he had contributed to the Mariam Appeal, but he refused to disclose the amount. He claimed that The Daily Telegraph had fabricated the story about Mr Galloway to get back at his anti-war activism.

“They want to harm Galloway’s reputation because he is one of the key opponents of the policies of Tony Blair,” he said. “Mr Galloway is a decent human being and a man of integrity who has always refused to be an agent for anyone.”

Today The Daily Telegraph claims that Saddam had approved a suggestion to shield Mr Galloway from the attentions of the Mukhabarat, the Ba’ath Party’s intelligence network, to avoid damaging him politically.

A memo dated May 6, 2000, from the Revolutionary Command Council of four senior Iraqis, was answered by the head of Saddam’s secretariat three days later endorsing the council’s idea.

In The Guardian today, Mr Galloway concedes that unnamed third parties involved in his fundraising activities may have profited from Saddam’s regime, but he insists he did not profit himself.

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