Former U.S. officials and Iraqi banking officials say the central bank had always been key to moving the regime’s cash. In the initial phase of Saddam Inc.’s sophisticated underground money railroad, Rafidain’s branch offices in Jordan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and other Middle Eastern countries would routinely transfer funds on Saddam’s behalf from Baghdad into the global banking system – to eventually disappear into the many layers of Saddam’s labyrinthine financial empire.
In one example of a dismal failure of cooperation by the international banking community, only the United Kingdom acted to close these Rafidain’s branches after a U.S. request to do.
At stake in the follow-the-money-trail battle is a stolen treasure trove that reportedly could range as high as $40 billion. This staggering figure, however, represents all the potentially diverted loot. Saddam’s personal stash reportedly is in the single-digit billions, according to investigator John Fawcett, who has been chasing Saddam’s finances for more than three years.
One of Fawcett’s clients is Kreindler & Kreindler, a Park Ave. law firm that has been working overtime to establish a money trail leading from Saddam Inc.’s amassed loot to al-Qaeda’s coffers. The firm’s goal is to isolate and seize such assets – for eventual distribution to the survivors of those who perished in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“We think Saddam’s laundered money was used in part to provide financial support to al-Qaeda, and we’re looking at billions of dollars hidden in financial institutions and companies,” says attorney James Kreindler.
But getting the goods is a staggering job of financial sleuthing.
Investigators -- both public and private -- have already identified five networks of more than 100 companies that had been used in Saddam’s salad days to launder money skimmed from Iraqi oil sales, with Saddam Inc. playing a financial shell game through companies in Switzerland, Jordan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and Panama.
Saddam’s laundered investments reportedly include gold, artworks, hotels, construction and metal fabrication concerns, money market accounts, commodity trading companies and publishing companies.
Included in this latter category is Lagardere, the French defense and media group that owns Hachette, the French publisher of Elle magazine and Car & Driver.
That, however, was in the freebooting 80s. Since the nettlesome era of U.N. sanctions, the dictator’s regime has reportedly squirreled away the bulk of its booty in such prosaic investments as bank deposits and government bonds, including U.S. Treasuries.
Unmasked so far are companies like Jaraco SA and Dynatrade SA, which utilized banks in Switzerland, France, Russia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates to run Saddam's money around in an intricate web.
Reportedly engineering the whole scheme was Saddam’s half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim Hasan al-Tikriti, who is now in American custody and a potential goldmine of information as to where the criminally obtained wealth resides.
The lion’s share of all this Saddam largesse reportedly came from Iraqi oil siphoned illegally off the oil-for food system, and smuggling operations in Turkey, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and the Gulf states.
An alleged example of the latter smuggling is detailed in a lawsuit filed last year in New York, which pleads that R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Holdings Inc. sold billions of cigarettes to Iraq -- utilizing paperwork trails that listed Russia instead of Baghdad as the destination for the products.
An example of the former oil scam is suggested by a General Accounting Office report that alleges that during March 2002, alone, Iraq smuggled out between 325,000 and 480,000 barrels of oil a day – past the noses of the U.N.
Reportedly at one stage of the windfall oil smuggling, some 45,000 Turkish truckers were on the roads, loaded up with bootleg oil, according to the GAO.
Recently, the New York Daily News reported the following scenario used in Saddam's oil scam:
When looking at what is known of the big picture, the financial sleuths consider that Saddam and his top henchmen certainly had ordinary and necessary “business expenses” that bit into this huge sum. Lots of the bounty was further expended in bribes to keep the opposition factions happy within the country. Other substantial sums went to buy the cooperation of key people in other countries.
But most disconcerting of all is the bottom line arithmetic.
The top ten or twenty thugs in the Iraq regime would need just so much to keep them comfortable in their new European lifestyles. Subtract the bribes as well, and that still leaves plenty to finance payback terrorism or even an eventual return to power.
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