Fawaz Zureikat

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Fawaz Abdullah Zureikat (or Zuraiqat or Zurayqat and variations) (1955 - ) is a Jordanian businessman from a wealthy family with land-owning and farming interests.

Zureikat was implicated in the United Nations Oil for Food scandal relating to corruption surrounding Iraq's oil exports. In the 2004 Duelfer Report [1] Zureikat is identified as receiving oil allocations from Iraq via Middle East Semi Conductors Co. In other documents, another company - Aredio Petroleum - is also linked to Zureikat. He'd been doing business in Iraq since 1986, and his brother Hatem is political prisoner in Syria since 1981 who once shared a cell with Tariq Aziz , and donated several hundred thousand pounds to George Galloway's Mariam Appeal charity. [2]

For a time he was station manager of Arab Television (ATV), a short-lived English-language satellite channel with offices in London and Baghdad which filmed and distributed the worldwide rights to the pre-Iraq war interview conducted in Baghdad between Tony Benn and Saddam Hussein.

He was also a member of the National Mobilisation Committee for the Defence of Iraq (NMCDI), based in Jordan, and a passionate opponent of sanctions on Iraq. He was arrested on 3 March 2003 in Amman by Jordanian intelligence services, along with other prominent businessmen who had financial links with Saddam Hussein's regime. He was later released.