As Gorgeous George eases into the fight for his specially-created new constituency today, The Slog brings news of exciting developments across the Channel.

French oil giant Total was yesterday charged with corruption and influence-peddling relating to the United Nations’ Iraqi oil-for-food programme of the 1990s.

Total’s legal chief Jean Veil said the firm will stand trial accused of corruption, complicity to deal in stolen property, and influence peddling in connection with the UN programme that ran from 1996 to 2003

“The judge made this decision against all expectations,” said Veil.

Launched in 1996, the $64billion oil-for-humanitarian programme was designed to allow Iraq, then under crippling international sanctions, to sell limited quantities of oil to buy vital medical and food supplies. But the programme was plagued by corruption involving UN employees, and more than 2,000 concerns from some 60 countries.

In 2002, a French investigation targeted several officials who allegedly received rights to purchase barrels of oil from former president Saddam Hussein’s regime at discount prices. The Parisian chatterati confidently expected the investigation to cease yesterday. Perhaps wannabe Poplar & Limehouse Parliamentary candidate George Galloway expected the same result; if so, his hopes have been dashed. There will be more merde emerging from Parisian courtrooms before too long.

In June 2007, Sir Philip Mawer, the chairman of the parliamentary standards committee, said that Galloway’s Iraqi humanitarian aid charity Mariam had allowed the Respect MP ‘through his controlling position in the appeal to benefit from monies, in terms of furtherance of his political objectives’. He had, Mawer asserted, ‘received such support at least recklessly or negligently, and probably knowingly’, and had been ‘complicit’ in trying to conceal the origins of the monies.

The Slog thought this might be a suitable opener to its forthcoming series on the life and times of ‘Gorgeous’ George Galloway, the most inconsistently outspoken and consistently pro-Islamic MP in the House of Commons.

STARTING TOMORROW: THE NEW CONSTITUENCY OF POPLAR & LIMEHOUSE – HOW IT CAME ABOUT.