One of the more intriguing parts of Sir Philip Mawer's report is about the time George Galloway purportedly met Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, on August 8, 2002, just months before the US-led invasion.

Although the MP's final meeting with the late dictator was known about, in late 2006, Sir Philip obtained a supposed copy of a record of the meeting taken by the former Iraqi regime itself.

The document was one of many seized with the fall of Baghdad and has been "authenticated" by the present Iraqi government.

Most of the translation of the meeting dealt with a critique of the UK government's support for America against Saddam's regime. The report said that, according to the text, "Mr Galloway spoke optimistically of the growing opposition within Britain to the UK government's stance".

The MP is then supposed to have said to Saddam: "Tariq Aziz has helped us with his contacts and has used his influence to facilitate our job and facilitate the mechanism by which we have been able to obtain the funding necessary to finance our activities. But we are now suffering from the problem of the price of oil, which has resulted in a reduction in our income and delay in receiving our dues."

Oil for food
THE most serious attack against Mr Galloway's integrity was made in reports by The Daily Telegraph in April 2003, just one month after the US-led invasion.

The then MP for Glasgow Kelvin was branded a traitor and accused of receiving around £375,000 a year from the former Iraqi regime under the guise of the now discredited UN oil for food programme - charges Mr Galloway has persistently and vehemently denied. Indeed, in late 2004 the MP won a libel action against the newspaper and was awarded £150,000 in damages.

The Mariam Appeal
THE Mariam Appeal was set up in 1998 by Mr Galloway to help four-year-old Mariam Hamza and other sick children in Iraq receive medical treatment. Over time, it became a political campaign against UN sanctions and military action in Iraq.

The Charity Commission launched two investigations into the appeal. The first in 2003 found it should have been registered as a charity but concluded there was no evidence money had been "misused or that any of the organisers had acted in bad faith".

The second came on the back of UN and Senate reports in America in 2005 that money from the UN oil for food programme had been channelled to fund the appeal.

Last month, the commission criticised Mr Galloway and other appeal trustees for failing to make sufficient enquiries into the source of donations, finding the campaign had received large amounts of money from "improper transactions" under the oil for food programme - a charge the MP branded "a complete and utter lie".

The commissioner concluded that while he found no evidence Mr Galloway "directly and personally, unlawfully received monies", there was "clear evidence the Mariam Appeal did".

Report broadside
FINALLY, Sir Philip fired off a broadside against Mr Galloway's behaviour towards his inquiry. He said the MP's position had been characterised by:

  • "repeated denial of facts, in some cases only conceded when they cannot be denied any longer";
  • "constant attack without justification on the motives and conduct of anyone who has any way offered evidence which might be considered damaging to him";
  • "the making of wholly incorrect allegations without any factual basis".