Family clues to Iraq's missing oil billions

[cal04]

The dictator is dead, and now the hunt for his illicit fortune is intensifying. Officials from the FBI and US Treasury are focusing their inquiries on £2.2bn of illegal oil profits

American and Iraqi government investigators tracing hundreds of millions of pounds missing from Saddam Hussein's illicit fortune are hoping to question members of the former dictator's close family.

Officials from the FBI, the American Treasury and the State Department particularly want to find £2.2bn in illegal profits that Saddam's regime is alleged to have earned from 2000-2003 from an oil-for-trade pact signed with Syria that was outside the official United Nations administered oil-for-food programme, according to official documents released to a US congressional sub-committee.

State Department and Treasury officials claim that Syria has failed to account properly for more than $500m in Iraqi oil profits. The cash, deposited in Syria's central bank, was paid to Syrian 'businessmen' after Saddam's fall, sources say. Syrian officials deny the allegations, saying that visits by American officials to Damascus in the autumn of 2003 failed to uncover any evidence of the missing cash apart from $300m that has already been frozen.

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In a report submitted to the CIA last year Charles Duelfer, a former UN arms inspectors, estimated that Saddam had amassed $10.9bn 'through illicit means' between 1990, when sanctions were imposed, and 2003. The dictator is also believed to have hidden cash in accounts in Switzerland, Japan, Germany and other countries and to have invested in precious stones, possibly diamonds purchased in the Far East.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1980561,00.html

[acmavm]

1. While they're at it they can look for all the billions that have gone

missing in the last three/four years. Two billion is pocket change compared to what Jerry Bremer and the boys embezzled, gave away, and lost.