These hearings covered certain corporations and several well-known political figures, including Russia's Vladimir Zhirinovsky and drew significant media attention for the combative appearance of British politician George Galloway, an anti-Iraq-War member of parliament for RESPECT The Unity Coalition (Respect), who vigorously denied the subcommittee's allegations against him and said they were politically motivated.
U.S. oil company Bayoil was among the corporations investigated by the committee,[1] and its executive David Chalmers was convicted of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
"I am not now nor have I ever been an oil trader" retorted Galloway, stating that the charges were false and part of a diversionary "mother of all smoke screens" by pro-Iraq-War U.S. politicians to deflect attention from the "theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth... on your watch" that had occurred not during the Oil-for-Food program but under the post-invasion Coalition Provisional Authority by "Halliburton and other American corporations... with the connivance of your own government."
Galloway claimed that the subcommittee's dossier was full of distortions and rudimentary mistakes, citing, for example, the charge that he had met with Saddam Hussein "many times" when the number was two.
[7][8] Senator Coleman conveyed these reports to the U.S. Department of Justice, the Manhattan DA, the Washington DC and New York federal prosecutors, the UK Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, and the Charity Commission.
[14] On January 6, 2006, South Korean businessman Tongsun Park was arrested by the FBI in Houston after he was indicted for illegally accepting millions of dollars from Iraq in the UN Oil-for-Food Programme.