2004-05-26

The Great Robbery of the Central Bank of Iraq

JP Morgan cleans out Iraqi central bank and takes it over.

A Protestant priest visited a friend who was a Catholic priest. The Catholic priest was well provided by the Church and hence lived in relative luxury. When the Protestant drew attention to this, the Catholic priest said, “You have other halves. We have better quarters.”

Catholic priests are not alone in leading the good life. The US Viceroy in Iraq Paul Bremer is reportedly drinking Saddam’s $2000 a bottle Napoleon-era brandy, smoking his expensive Davidoff cigars and he has even furnished his office with Saddam’s Napoleon-era furniture.

But this is nothing compared to the massive bank heist of about $10 billion that the International Currency Review has accused the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) of having pulled off in Iraq. It also accuses that the money was laundered through a number of CIA controlled accounts, including some held in the Discount Bank of Israel, Credit Suisse in Switzerland and the Dresdner Bank in Germany.

The Review cites whistleblower Nelda Rogers, a retired Navy Lt Commander and a debriefing officer with the DIA. She had claimed that the heist was part of a failed attempt to plant Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) in Iraq. While the Review claims the money was successfully taken out, other reports suggest Ms. Rogers having claimed that the CIA and DIA personnel had to scramble out of the area when regular US troops showed up.

All accounts agree on one thing. More than 100 intelligence and military personnel who had taken part in the operation died in what is being described as various incidents of friendly fire.

The Review claims that Rogers and a team of ten DIA operatives were financed through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They were supported by CIA agents in Iraq. The Department of Agriculture of the U.S. is not audited by that country’s auditor general and is therefore traditionally used to finance covert operations. The Review costs $475 a copy and is available to a small group of people in the world banking community interested in financial intelligence.