Sunday, April 13, 2003

Where are Saddam's billions?

by pv vivekanand

International investigators and intelligence agents have yet to come up with the so-called Saddam billions -- bank accounts and assets of Saddam Hussein outside Iraq -- and they could now conveniently argue that the funds would n ever be found.
It was claimed by the US government that Saddam and his sons systematically stashed away a part of the country's income from oil exports; however, from 1990, when the US ordered a freeze on all Iraqi assets and bank accounts of Iraqi leaders, no one has been able to come up with substantiated evidence of such funds.
Some reports have said that Saddam, his sons and some of the close Saddam associates in Baghdad had received kickbacks on oil sales and arms purchases since the 70s and maintained accounts in secretive Switzerland, Germany and other European countries.
It was known among Jordanian businessmen and commodity brokers that Saddam's eldest son Uday, who maintained an office in Amman, Jordan, used to demand up to five per cent of all imports into the country chanelled through the various state organisations. For those who wanted Uday's help in finalising deals and clearing up banking snitches since 1991 had to deal with the manager of the Amman office.
The channel was suddenly closed down in 1996 when the manager, who had served as a senior official of Iraq's Rafidian Bank, "disappeared" with an unspecified amount he had collected as Uday's "commission" for nearly one year.
There had been many estimates of the "Saddam fortunes" -- from $30 billion to $6 billion -- but it has baffled observers that none of these claims was ever proved out, leading some to believe that the toppled Iraqi president never maintained an account outside his country. Some reports argued that Saddam, his sons and associates had hidden the funds in a secret network of offshore bank accounts, front companies and other investments in Europe and elsewhere.
But it is strange that the best efforts of the US government and private investigators never succeeded in unearthing the "billions."
In 1991, unidentified US officials said investigators had identified "dozens" of accounts held in "proxy" names by Saddam and others, but details of such accounts were never released. About $5 billion worth of Iraqi assets were indeed ever frozen, including holdings in America, Britain, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg and Austria.
These included classic cars -- Uday was known for his fascination for expensive cars, particularly sports vehicles -- and an 8.4 per cent stake in Hachette, the French company that publishes Elle. But nothing further was heard of these seized assets after the UN asked for an accounting with a view of taking them over under a Security Council resolution.
If one were to go by Saddam's public statements about Arab economies and petro-dollars, it is difficult to believe that he would maintain foreign bank accounts or investments in the West.
Saddam's two sons-in-law who had defected to Jordan in 1995 and went back after six months and promptly got killed were reported to have brought with them and transferred from abroad some $30 million which was deposited in Jordanian banks. A behind-the-scene dispute developed over that amount after they were killed and their wives filed claims, but the bank concerned said later that it settled the dispute "amicably." That money was supposed to have represented part of wha the sons-in-law had siphoned off from funds allocated for the country's military programmes. One of the sons-in-law was head of the Iraqi Military Industrialisation Commission.
Following the 1991 war, the government of Kuwait hired the New York-based detective agency, Kroll, to trace assets held by the Iraqi government, Saddam Hussein, his family members and other Iraqi leaders. Kroll had come up with the $5 billion figure, but it was never made clear whether these were held in Saddam's name or represented the worth of the country's holdings abroad.
Some accounts say that Saddam's half-brother, Barzan Al Tikriti who served as Iraq's ambassador to the UN's European headquarters in Geneva, used to manage Saddam's money. At the same time, sceptics say, Barzan, who was reportedly killed in an American attack on his residence in Ramadi in Iraq last week, was handling Iraq's arms purchases from Europe during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war and that no significant deals were made after the 1991 war.
According to a report compiled in 2001 by Kroll, a Swiis-based Iraqi who had a European passport, Hassam Rassam, was the pointman in channelling funds for Saddam's family. Again, it remains unclear whether he was questioned at any point. Asked by the media in 1992 whether he was Saddam's banker, Rassam replied "I only hope it was so..."
The massive looting of presidential palaces and other buildings in Baghdad following the apparent fall of the Saddam regime has given rise to assumptions that the "hidden" Saddam billions would never be traced, if only beause the looters threw away "sensitive" papers that might have offered clues to the investigators.
The post-war regime might launch a fresh hunt, and Kroll might be given the job. However, it is highly unlikely that anyone would be able to unearth the "pot of gold" -- if indeed there was one.