Free Republic

In the hunt for Saddam Hussein's billions, investigators have identified five networks of more than 100 companies used to launder money skimmed from Iraqi oil sales. Saddam's gangster regime set up shell companies in Switzerland, Jordan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and Panama, according to investigators. Those company networks and their banking affiliations were used to enrich the former Iraqi strongman, his sons Uday and Qusay, and other family members. "Ultimately, the money was stolen from the Iraqi people," said Taylor Griffin, spokesman for the Treasury Department, which is heading the government's laundering probe along with U.S. Customs, the Secret Service and various...

<p>June 19, 2003 -- BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. troops raided two farmhouses near Tikrit north of Baghdad yesterday and seized millions of American dollars, British pounds, euros and Iraqi dinars apparently designated, in part, to pay bounties to kill American soldiers, a senior U.S. general said.</p>

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen won't let go of the mystery: Just where did the Cuban government get up to $3.9 billion it funneled through a Swiss bank over seven years. Was Havana simply, as it claims, banking its income from tourism and remittances that Cubans abroad send to their relatives on the island? Or was dirty money involved? Ros-Lehtinen, the Cuban-born Florida Republican, wants to know, and she has been badgering officials of the United Bank of Switzerland (UBS) and the U.S. Federal Reserve for answers. ''That's an awful lot of money,'' Ros-Lehtinen told The Herald. According to the latest answers...

Master Sgt. Jay Phelps and Sgt. Teresa Burroughs hold the 25-pound block of gold they discovered in their office at FOB Speicher. Staff Sgt. Jesse C. Riggin Printer-friendly version TIKRIT, Iraq (Army News Service, Feb. 7, 2006) – A unique challenge for two Soldiers arose recently with the discovery of a very special doorstop in the terrain team’s work space: a 25-pound block of solid gold. “I noticed it during the relief-in-place with the unit before us, sitting under the table in the office,” said Sgt. Teresa Burroughs, a terrain analyst in the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne...

Saddam Hussein ordered Iraq's central bank to withdraw $1 billion for his youngest son the day before the invasion to stop it falling into foreign hands, according to a leaked letter apparently written by the former dictator. In a hand-written note to the bank's governor, marked "top secret" and dated March 19, 2003, the former president told Isam Huwaish to give $920 million and 90 million euros to his son Qusay and another man, al-Mashriq newspaper reported yesterday. The Iraqi national broadsheet reproduced the letter, which appears to bear Saddam's signature. Saddam sent bank a hand-written note Employees of the...

While Microsoft giant Bill Gates hobnobs with the likes of Earth Charter architects Mikhail Gorbachev and Maurice Strong, IBM has jumped into bed with Saddam’s favourite bank, BNP Paribas. Since December 2003, IBM and French bank BNP Paribas have been in a 50-50 partnership in a massive IT operation. IBM provided the technological expertise to create BNP Paribas out of the merger of three banks and now has a subsidiary that it runs with BNP. The giant multinationals have signed up on a giant venture to manage BNP Paribas’s information and technology operations. The deal covers a kind of computing...

Audit: $9 Billion Unaccounted for in Iraq WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. occupation authority in Iraq was unable to keep track of nearly $9 billion it transferred to government ministries, which lacked financial controls, security, communications and adequate staff, an inspector general has found. The U.S. officials relied on Iraqi audit agencies to account for the funds but those offices were not even functioning when the funds were transferred between October 2003 and June 2004, according to an audit by a special U.S. inspector general. The findings were released Sunday by Stuart Bowen Jr., special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction....

Occupation authority said unable to account for $8.8 billion - The U.S. occupation authority in Iraq was unable to keep track of nearly $9 billion it transferred to government ministries, which lacked financial controls, security, communications and adequate staff, an inspector general has found. The U.S. officials relied on Iraqi audit agencies to account for the funds but those offices were not even functioning when the funds were transferred....

Defense minister threatens to arrest opponent in secret cash purchase. BAGHDAD, IRAQ – Earlier this month, $300 million in dollar bills was taken from Iraq's central bank, put into boxes and put on a charter jet bound for Lebanon, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials. The money was to be used to buy tanks and weapons from arms dealers, the officials said – part of an accelerated effort to assemble an armored division for the Iraqi army. But where the money went, to whom and for what, remains a mystery. The deal appears to have been arranged outside the financial...

Moscow is shielding a former Iraqi ambassador to Russia and two top former Iraqi spies from a U.S.-led campaign to repatriate some of the billions of dollars in assets Saddam Hussein's regime stashed around the world, a senior U.S. official said. The United States, Britain and Iraq want the three men and a front company run by one of them added to a list of former Iraqi officials whose assets must be returned to the interim government in Baghdad under Security Council Resolution 1518, but permanent council member Russia won't allow it, U.S. Assistant Treasury Secretary Juan Carlos Zarate told...

A detailed analysis of Saddam Hussein's secret money-laundering techniques shows here for the first time how he used the same offshore money launderers as Osama bin Laden. That covert money network, based in the tax havens of Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Panama and Nassau, helped bankroll the war machines of both Iraq and al-Qaeda. More than 1,000 pages of confidential corporate, bank and legal documents show how the network functioned. The papers come from court cases filed in several European countries, from corporate records, from investigations by Italian police, from a report of the Kroll international investigative agency, and from private sources....

<p>HINESVILLE, Ga. -- He took the money. Sgt. Matt Novak admits that much. He and several fellow soldiers could not resist after discovering nearly $200 million in $100 bills sealed inside a gardener's cottage in a Baghdad palace complex last spring.</p>

KUWAIT CITY (AP) -- U.S. administrators in Iraq have frozen records of a U.N. aid program to help investigators looking into possible corruption during the Saddam Hussein era, Secretary of State Colin Powell said Saturday during a stopover in Kuwait. U.S. congressional investigators have charged that Saddam's regime amassed $10 billion through oil smuggling, illegal surcharges and kickbacks from the United Nations' 1996-2002 oil-for-food program. An Iraqi newspaper has published a list of about 270 former Cabinet officials, legislators, political activists and journalists in about 46 countries suspected of profiting from the scam. "We are concerned, deeply concerned, that money...

WASHINGTON -- Congressional investigators said today that Saddam Hussein's government reaped $10.1 billion in illegal revenues related to the United Nations' oil-for-food program -- much more than previous estimates. The findings by the General Accounting Office come as the United Nations considers expanding its investigation of allegations of corruption in the program. The oil-for-food program allowed Saddam's government to sell oil if the money was used to buy humanitarian goods and pay victims of the 1991 Gulf War. Other oil sales were prohibited under a U.N. embargo imposed after Iraq invaded Kuwait. The program ended in November. The GAO had...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congressional investigators said Thursday that Saddam Hussein's government reaped $10.1 billion in illegal revenues related to the United Nations' oil-for-food program -- much more than previous estimates.</p> <p>The findings by the General Accounting Office come as the United Nations considers expanding its investigation of allegations of corruption in the program.</p>

Search for Saddam's stashed millions remains futile Press Trust of India Washington, February 20 The search for between $2 and 40 billion that former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein reportedly stashed away has proven to be as elusive as the search for weapons of mass destruction. The US has recovered almost nothing of the billions Hussein and his family supposedly squirreled away after a hunt of nearly a year, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Treasury had reported Saddam's hidden funds, but nothing has been traced so far. Jeremy P Carver, a British attorney who represented Kuwait in its damage claims...

<p>BERN, Switzerland -- The United States thinks it has found at least $300 million that Saddam Hussein hid in banks, yet it doesn't have enough evidence to get countries such as Syria and Switzerland to hand over the money, U.S. and European officials said.</p>

BERN, Switzerland - The United States believes it has found at least $300 million Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) hid in banks, yet doesn't have enough evidence to get countries such as Syria and Switzerland to hand over the money, U.S. and European officials told The Associated Press. The funds at stake could go to the Iraq (news - web sites) insurgency or the country's reconstruction — depending on who gets it first. What troubles investigators more is that much of Saddam's cash may already be gone. The weak U.S. intelligence and the slow-moving investigation, now in its 11th...

DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Syria's president has pledged on Thursday to return Iraqi funds held in Syria after both countries agree on the amount -- put at $3 billion (2.08 billion pounds) by Baghdad. "President Bashar al-Assad assured us that the Iraqi funds in Syria are safe and that he was willing to hand them over to Iraqi authorities," Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, a member of Iraq's U.S.-appointed Governing Council, told a news conference in Damascus after meeting Assad on Thursday. Iraqi officials have said the funds in Syrian state-run banks amount to $3 billion, but their Syrian counterparts say the amount is...

<p>PARIS — Syria's Central Bank and the Medina Bank in Lebanon are holding at least $2 billion in cash, as well as gold bullion and platinum, that was smuggled out of Iraq, according to a letter written on the stationery of the Syrian army's intelligence department.</p>

<p>AMMAN, Jordan (CNN) -- Saddam Hussein withdrew $2 billion from Iraqi banks last spring, including a sizable withdrawal a week after the fall of Baghdad, according to a member of the Iraq Governing Council.</p> <p>Dr. Iyad Allawi -- in an interview with CNN Tuesday -- elaborated on reports published Monday in two Arabic newspapers on what he says interrogators are learning from Saddam since his capture earlier this month.</p>

DUBAI (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein has given his U.S. captors information on hidden weapons and as much as $40 billion (22.5 billion pounds) he may have seized while he was Iraq's president, an Iraqi official has been quoted as saying. "Saddam has confessed the names of people he told to keep the money and he gave names of those who have information on equipment and weapons warehouses," Iyad Allawi, a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat daily. "The Governing Council is searching for $40 billion worth of funds seized by Saddam when he was...

DUBAI (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein has given his U.S. captors information on hidden weapons and as much as $40 billion (22.5 billion pounds) he may have seized while he was Iraq's president, an Iraqi official has been quoted as saying. "Saddam has confessed the names of people he told to keep the money and he gave names of those who have information on equipment and weapons warehouses," Iyad Allawi, a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat daily. "The Governing Council is searching for $40 billion worth of funds seized by Saddam when he was...

U.S. authorities have identified more than a billion dollars in Iraqi assets in banks in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan and are pursuing hundreds of leads in the United States concerning possible illicit financial transactions with the former Iraqi government.Treasury, Internal Revenue Service and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have spent nine months poring over financial records recovered from the vault of the Central Bank of Iraq, including records they say show how Saddam Hussein's government diverted at least $1.8 billion from the United Nations' humanitarian oil-for-food program and moved some of that money to foreign banks or used it...

Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Dresdner Bank AG, a unit of Allianz AG, behaved illegally in blocking the London account of the Saudi central bank because the German lender was owed money by government ministries, lawyers for the Saudi bank told a U.K. court. Dresdner notified the central bank on Oct. 14, 2002, that it won't transfer 49.1 million euros ($61 million) from the London account because the Saudi ministries of Finance and Defense owed that much to Dresdner's Luxembourg branch, according to documents filed at the High Court by the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency. ``Dresdner London's action in blocking the...

U.S. Authorities Probe Whether Saddam's $750,000 Part of Iraqi Central Bank Loot By Jeannine Aversa Associated Press Writer Published: Dec 15, 2003 WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. authorities are investigating whether $750,000 found in Saddam Hussein's hideaway was part of the loot snatched from Iraqi's central bank at the onset of the war. The government hopes the deposed Iraqi president's capture might provide new insights into how terrorists raise and move money. Juan Zarate, the Treasury Department's deputy assistant secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes, said Monday that a multiagency team is trying to determine whether the cash is genuine...

<p>December 5, 2003 -- WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein has tens of billions of dollars stashed in foreign bank accounts and is likely using the war chest to fund attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, a former aide said yesterday. Jewad Hashem, who was Iraq's planning minister in the 1960s and '70s, said in a new book being excerpted in the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper that the ousted Iraqi dictator skimmed 5 percent of Iraq's oil revenues for two decades and deposited the money abroad.</p>

The Associated Press CAIRO, Egypt Dec. 4 — Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein might still have stashed away in foreign banks tens of billions of dollars that he skimmed for years from oil revenues, a former Iraqi minister said, according to a London-based Arabic newspaper. Jewad Hashem, Iraq's planning minister in the late 1960s and early '70s who now lives in Canada, said that 5 percent of oil revenues was ordered deposited abroad in accounts under Saddam's supervision when Iraq nationalized its oil industry in 1972. Hashem's assertion is in his autobiography, which is being excerpted in the Asharq Al-Awsat...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) withdrew more than $1 billion from Iraq (news - web sites)'s central bank hours before U.S. forces invaded, and some of the money may be funding the Iraqi insurgency against U.S. troops, ABC News reported on Wednesday. Quoting a letter purportedly written by Saddam and obtained by ABC News, and citing U.S. officials, ABC News said $132 million of funds withdrawn by the Iraqi leader is unaccounted for and may be being used by his followers to fund attacks against U.S. forces. ABC News said the handwritten letter from Saddam, dated...

They haven't coughed it up yet, but Washington is pressuring Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey, and Switzerland to fork over to Iraq's new government millions in assets hidden in banks there by ex-prez Saddam Hussein. In Syria alone, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents uncovered $260 million in hidden Iraqi assets.

Syrian banks are in discussions regarding the return of Iraqi assets back their rightful owners, said Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam on Saturday, October 25, 2003. “There is some (Iraqi) money and some (Iraqi) demands” to recover it, said Khaddam according to AP. “This matter is still under discussion”. US investigators said they have evidence that $3 billion of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's government funds are deposited in Syrian-controlled banks in both Syria and Lebanon, according to American government officials. According to Syria’s economy minister Ghassan El-Rifai, the Iraqi funds are in personal accounts and that the total...

DAMASCUS, SyriaSyrian banks are holding Iraqi assets, and their return to Iraqi control is under discussion, Syrian Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam said Saturday. Khaddam's remark broke ground as earlier this month Syrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Bushra Kanafani denied US reports that Syria had millions of dollars worth of Iraqi money. Kanafani dismissed as "baseless" press reports that Syrian and Lebanese banks were holding up to US$3 billion worth of assets from the regime of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. She spoke to reporters on Oct. 11. Ten days later, however, an official of the US Embassy in Damascus said...

DAMASCUS, Oct 22 (AFP) - Iraqi and US experts were in Damascus Wednesday in the hope of tracking down billions of dollars Saddam Hussein's regime is suspected of hiding in the country's banks, a well-informed source told AFP. A US embassy spokesman here also said that an "Iraqi assets technical team is present now in Damascus," but refused to confirm they were chasing looted wealth being sought to help reconstruction of the war-ravaged country. "Two (members) of the team are Americans and three are naturalised Iraqis," the well-informed source said. "They have been in cooperation with the Syrian government to...

ASHINGTON, Oct. 20 — American investigators have evidence that $3 billion that belonged to Saddam Hussein's government is being held in Syrian-controlled banks in Syria and Lebanon, Bush administration officials say.A delegation led by the Treasury Department has spent nearly two weeks in Damascus trying to win access to accounts established by the former Iraqi government or its confederates, the officials said last week. Syria has promised to cooperate, but has so far failed to do so, the officials said.A United Nations resolution passed after the American-led war against Iraq calls on all nations to seize and return to the...

Syria is holding hundreds of millions of dollars worth of frozen Iraqi assets. But the money is frozen and cannot be used to fund attacks on American forces, the economy minister said yesterday. Ghassan El-Rifai said he had examined all Iraqi holdings and claimed that money in personal accounts was "just enough for people to make a living". He denied reports that American investigators had found $3 billion (£1.8 billion) of Iraqi assets in Syrian-controlled banks. "We have frozen Iraqi assets in accordance with the UN resolution but the figure is nowhere near $3 billion and we have not touched...

<p>Your car could be running on gasoline made from Iraqi oil.</p> <p>ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips both imported Iraqi crude to California in August, according to a filing Tuesday by the Energy Information Administration, the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy.</p>

Source: Saddam's money may be in Syria Official: Syria 'needs to do more to cooperate' From Elise LabottCNN Washington Bureau Monday, October 13, 2003 Posted: 10:26 PM EDT (0226 GMT) A U.S. Treasury Department official tells CNN that two criminal investigators from the Internal Revenue Service are in Damascus seeking access to specific accounts. WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration believes as much as $3 billion from deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime is in Syrian banks, and it wants more cooperation from Syria to help find and return the money to the Iraqi people, a Treasury Department official said...

Since the fall of Baghdad in April, American officials have scoured the globe in search of Saddam Hussein's legendary fortune. Now they think they have found a big chunk. According to a U.S. estimate, as much as $3 billion in Iraqi assets is sitting in Syrian government- controlled banks, a senior U.S. official tells Time, and Washington is anxious to determine that the money is not funding violence against Americans in Iraq, or being drawn down by regime officials and supporters. For months the U.S. has quietly insisted that Damascus give up the funds. Secretary of State Colin Powell met...

NEW YORK: US officials believe they have found a big chunk of Saddam Hussein "legendary fortune" and that as much as three billion dollars in Iraqi assets are lying in Syrian-controlled banks, a media report said. "Washington is anxious to determine that the money is not funding violence against Americans in Iraq, or being drawn down by regime officials and supporters", the Time Magazine says. Since the fall of Baghdad in April, the report says, American officials have scoured the globe in search of Saddam Hussein's legendary fortune. For months, the report says, the US has quietly insisted that Damascus...

NEWS RELEASEHEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND7115 South Boundary BoulevardMacDill AFB, Fla. 33621-5101Phone: (813) 827-5894; FAX: (813) 827-2211; DSN 651-5894 October 10, 2003Release Number: 03-10-01 NINEVAH PROVINCE SCHOOLS BENEFIT FROM SEIZED IRAQI ASSETS MOSUL, Iraq – Coalition soldiers and non-governmental organizations partnered to rebuild more than 800 schools in the Ninevah Province, current home of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault). The division’s Commander’s Emergency Relief Program, which draws from Iraqi government funds seized after the first Gulf War, has to date spent $2,040,513 on 330 completed school projects including the recently opened Ninevah Province Education Headquarters in Mosul. The...

Bulk of Iraq Reconstruction Monies 'Will Come From Iraqis,' Rumsfeld Says By Gerry J. GilmoreAmerican Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Oct. 2, 2003 -- The American taxpayer will not have to foot the entire bill for rebuilding post-Saddam Iraq, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said here today. The $20 billion for Iraqi security and reconstruction contained within President Bush's $87 billion supplemental budget proposal for fiscal 2004 now before Congress "is not intended to cover all of Iraq's needs," Rumsfeld noted to reporters at a Pentagon press conference. "The bulk of the funds for Iraq's reconstruction will come from Iraqis,"...

WASHINGTON (Talon News) -- On Friday, President Bush ordered the seizure of assets of members of the former Iraqi regime. The President declared he is acting under the authority of the U.S. Constitution and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1483 to address "the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by obstacles to the orderly reconstruction of Iraq." Bush said that the removal of Iraqi property from that country by certain senior officials of the former Iraqi regime and their immediate family members constituted an obstacle to the rebuilding of the...

Tue August 26, 2003 07:27 PM ET By Adam Entous WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. authorities in Iraq have all but exhausted the seized assets they have used to pay Iraqi civil servants, and some administration and congressional officials said on Tuesday that extra money may be needed sooner than expected for U.S. efforts in the occupied state. U.S. Treasury Department spokesman Tony Fratto said a cash shipment of $419 million would be made in the next week from a New York Federal Reserve account that once held $1.7 billion and this would "nearly exhaust the available vested funds." One key...

Mon August 18, 2003 06:28 PM ET By Andrew Marshall BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Attacks by saboteurs on Iraq's decrepit infrastructure and oil industry have cost the economy billions of dollars, the country's U.S. governor said on Monday, as firefighters battled to control a pipeline blaze. U.S. Army engineers dropped water from helicopters to try to douse the flames on the main oil export pipeline to Turkey, a crucial economic lifeline which reopened last Wednesday but was shut down two days later after saboteurs set it ablaze. U.S. administrator Paul Bremer told CNN in an interview in Baghdad that hardcore supporters...

<p>The intercepted vessel belongs to a United Arab Emirates company based in Dubai, British Navy Cmdr. Graeme Mackay said.</p> <p>The UAE vessel, Navstar 1, ignored three warnings from the HMS Sutherland to return to the southern Iraqi port of Umm Qasr, prompting the Royal Marines to board the ship and arrest the master and crew.</p>

Iraq pleads for asset return Iraq is asking for government and private assets frozen overseas to be returned to pay for humanitarian and reconstruction needs. The money - $1.7bn in the US alone, as well as $600m elsewhere - should be immediately transferred back to Iraq under a UN Security Council resolution of 22 May, according to the man chosen to be acting head of Iraq's central bank. "These funds are urgently needed for humanitarian, reconstruction, civilian administration and other purposes benefiting the people of Iraq," said Faleh Dawod Salman in a latter sent to the Security Council via US...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Assets seized from the Iraqi government should be used to rebuild the country and not to compensate 17 Americans held captive in Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, Justice Department lawyers told a federal judge Tuesday. Attorneys for the former POWs argued that a 1996 federal law should give them access to the money. The case before U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts has put the Bush administration in a difficult position - trying to show sympathy for POWs seeking compensation for alleged torture while seeking to ensure that every resource possible is available to pay...

WASHINGTON, July 29 (Reuters) - The U.S. government told a federal judge on Tuesday that it did not want to use seized Iraqi funds to compensate 17 Americans held as prisoners of war during the 1991 Gulf War. Shannen Coffin, a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, said the government preferred to spend the money on rebuilding postwar Iraq. "It really is unthinkable that in the end that the reconstruction of Iraq should be done on the backs of the POWs who were brutally tortured (there)," said Stephen Fennell, attorney for the 17 former prisoners of war and...

Washington-AP -- The government has been ordered to hold onto hundreds of (m) millions of dollars in Iraqi assets to guarantee compensation to 17 former P-O-W's tortured during the first Gulf War. A federal judge says the government has to retain more than 650 (m) million dollars in Iraqi money in a New York account. The judge in Washington D-C will soon hear further arguments in the case, from both the former prisoners of war and from the government. The 17 former P-O-W's sued Saddam Hussein, Iraqi and its intelligence service in 2002. The judge found in their favor two...

GENEVA: Switzerland answered a U.S. request and ordered a freeze on any assets belonging to former Iraqi officials Wednesday, even though some Swiss officials complained that President George W. Bush is using the fight against terror to strengthen U.S. global "hegemony." The government said banks and financial institutions must report any funds linked to 55 Iraqi officials named on the U.S. most-wanted list, including former President Saddam Hussein and his two sons. The list was approved by the U.N. Sanctions Committee earlier this week. Switzerland had already ordered a precautionary freeze on Iraqi assets as a result of earlier U.N....