Galloway to be suspended from Commons over Iraq

from the London Times Online:

GEORGE GALLOWAY, the MP who campaigned against the Iraq war, is to be suspended from parliament [for one month] over his links to the United Nations oil-for-food programme in Iraq. The parliamentary standards watchdog will rule this week that Galloway failed properly to declare his links to a charitable appeal partially funded from money made by selling Iraqi oil under Saddam Hussein, according to a source close to the inquiry...

In 1998 Galloway founded the Mariam Appeal, which campaigned for the lifting of sanctions on Iraq. The appeal, which paid Galloway’s wife and funded international travel for the MP, received almost £450,000 from Fawaz Zureikat, a Jordanian businessman who was also a trustee of the appeal. It subsequently emerged that more than half of this money came from the proceeds of Iraqi oil sales...

The Mariam Appeal, which raised more than £1.4m, has never filed any accounts and the parliamentary authorities have been unable to account for some of the expenditure.

According to the Times, Galloway plans to fight the charges. This should be interesting...