Galloway wife given £84k from leukaemia girl’s fund
GEORGE Galloway’s exwife received £84,000 from a fund set up to treat an Iraqi girl suffering from leukaemia, an inquiry reveals.
The firebrand former MP, who is standing as an independent in today’s election, raised £1.5million by launching an appeal for four year old Mariam Hamza who he met on a trip to Baghdad.
His then wife, Amineh AbuZayyad, was appointed the appeal’s medical and scientific officer without any tendering process or job contract.
Documents from an unpublished Charity Commission inquiry showed she was paid £42,000 for her work and the same again in expenses.
This is substantially more than the £54,000 given to the Yorkhill NHS Trust in Glasgow for treating Mariam.
And it was almost as much as the £100,000 total estimated cost of her care.
The documents, released under a Freedom of Information Act, also show Mr Galloway was paid cheques worth more than £3,000. He said these were for legitimate travel expenses. Mr Galloway, 62, and Dr AbuZayyad, 49, were trustees of the fund. But a person in a position of trust within a charity is not entitled to benefit directly from it without proper authority.
Palestinian-born medic Dr Abu-Zayyad’s earnings were unauthorised because the appeal’s constitution did not enable payments to executive committee members.
But the inquiry did not demand repayment after deciding she provided a service of value and had been unaware the salary was in breach of trust, The Times reported. Mr Gallo- way’s lawyers, who also represented his then wife, told the Commission she was the ‘natural choice’ for her role because she spoke Arabic, knew the Middle East and was a cancer research specialist.
The Commission has previously released documents about the inquiry into the appeal, but did not reveal the amount received by Dr Abu-Zayyad.
Its draft guidance to press officers advised them that reporters asking how much she was paid should be told, ‘we cannot disclose the information,’ and instead tell them to contact Mr Galloway directly. The documents were only released after a decade long battle by the paper, which went to the Supreme Court.
Mr Galloway, who is standing in the Labour stronghold of Manchester Gorton, said: ‘The Mariam Appeal was a political campaign not a charity.
‘ The Charity Commission decreed it should be a charity and long ago accepted its accounts... It closed 14 years ago. Dr Abu-Zayyad did not receive any “unauthorised benefits”. Neither did I. Nor did anyone else.’
‘Not entitled to benefit’