British MP and anti-Iraq war campaigner George Galloway is to face a fresh investigation into the funding of his campaign against UN sanctions in Iraq, a report said on Thursday.
The Daily Telegraph said that the Charity Commission, the regulatory body for not-for-profit organizations in England and Wales, had launched another probe into the now wound-up Mariam Appeal created by the former Labor MP in 1998.
The commission concluded last year that no funds for the appeal, which provided medical aid to Iraqi civilians, had been misused or acquired from improper sources.
But its head of legal services said in May that the commission would look at new information from a US Senate sub-committee that has accused Galloway of taking illegal kickbacks from the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein.
In October a probe into the UN's now defunct oil-for-food program in Iraq alleged that Galloway was allocated more than 18 million barrels of oil under the scandal-tainted scheme.
The allocations - vehemently denied by Galloway - were allegedly made either directly in his name or that of his associate, Jordanian businessman Fawaz Zureikat, to support the Mariam Appeal against sanctions.
A spokesman for Galloway was quoted by the Telegraph as saying that the fresh investigation was "a complete waste of time" and had been launched at Washington's behest.
The Mariam Appeal had been "entirely legitimate", as were all donations, the spokesman told the newspaper, insisting that the Charity Commission would find nothing new.
It was the Daily Telegraph that first alleged that Galloway received kickbacks from Saddam's regime, allegations based on documents that the paper said that it had found in a government office in Baghdad after Saddam's regime was deposed.
Galloway sued for libel and in December 2004 was handed damages of 150,000 pounds Sterling ($260,000) by a British court.
The flamboyant and controversial left-winger, variously nicknamed "Gorgeous George" or the "the MP for Baghdad Central", spent 16 years in British Prime Minister Tony Blair's ruling Labor Party, but was expelled in 2003. In elections in May he won a formerly safe Labor seat under the banner of his own Respect Party.
British MP Galloway faces new inquiry into charity
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