BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 21 - Earlier this month, according to Iraqi officials, $300 million in American bills was taken out of Iraq’s Central Bank, put into boxes and quietly put on a charter jet bound for Lebanon.
The money was to be used to buy tanks and other weapons from international arms dealers, the officials say, as part of an accelerated effort to assemble an armored division for the fledgling Iraqi Army. But exactly where the money went, and to whom, and for precisely what, remains a mystery, at least to Iraqis who say they have been trying to find out.
The $300 million flight has been the talk of Iraq’s political class, and fueled the impression among many Iraqis and Western officials that the interim Iraqi government, set up after the American occupation formally ended in June, is awash in corruption. It is not clear whether the money came from Iraqi or American sources, or both.
According to a senior Iraqi financial official with knowledge of the deal, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject, the $300 million was then transferred to the Warqa Bank, a private Iraqi financial institution with a capitalization of about $7 million. That bank, the Iraqi official said, does not have the ability to transfer money electronically to another account in another country. An equivalent amount of cash was then taken from the vault of the Central Bank of Iraq, taken to the airport, loaded on an airplane and sent to Lebanon.
“The government here knows it is coming to an end,” the official said. “This is what governments do when they are coming to an end.”
A second Iraqi financial official, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed the transaction. The official described the arrangement as “unusual” and said he had ordered an investigation of the transaction.
The senior Iraqi financial official said the arms deal appeared to bypass the elaborate financial mechanism set up by the Americans at the end of the war that was intended to help Iraqi import goods from abroad. Under that system, Iraqi revenues intended for imports are routed through the Trade Bank of Iraq and are facilitated, and largely controlled, by large American financial institutions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/22/international/middleeast/22baghdad.html
** looks like the current amerikkkan sponsored puppet regime is running away with hundreds of millions as a nice bonus paycheck for all the sellout they have been doing.**
Ocean twelve don’t have nothing compared to these government thieves!
