WASHINGTON – Huge sums of illicitly-obtained Iraqi funds have been discovered in foreign countries in the past week, a senior US Treasury Department official says.
“Hundreds of millions of dollars of previously unknown illegal proceeds have been uncovered abroad in a matter of days, and are now subject to seizure,” said Treasury general counsel David Aufhauser.
“More is to come in multiples that may dwarf those numbers,” he told a securities industry conference.
“That is money that can no longer be directed to promote terror. It is money, in fact, that has every promise of being repatriated to the people of a free Iraq.”
Aufhauser declined to specificy were the money had been found.
Use of the funds, allegedly obtained from activities such as oil smuggling and kickbacks from the United Nations “oil-for-food” program for Iraq, had been suspended pending local legal proceedings.
One week earlier, the Treasury announced it was using special war powers granted by the USA Patriot Act to confiscate about 1.74 billion dollars in Iraqi funds frozen in US banks.
It promised to use most of the money for a fund dedicated to rebuilding and providing humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people.
Afhauser said 1.615 billion dollars already had been confiscated and placed in a bank account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York under the control of Treasury Secretary John Snow. Another 77 million dollars may be raked in by this evening, said Aufhauser, leaving an outstanding balance of about 57 million dollars.
“That’s nothing short of remarkable,” he said.
Some of the money seized is being kept aside to pay damages to alleged US victims of the Iraqi regime. Aufhauser said the Treasury Department had agreed with legal authorities to limit the payout to about 125 million dollars.
Besides the funds held in the United States, 11 other countries had reported blocking about 600 million dollars of Iraqi funds under UN sanctions, a Treasury official said last week.
The biggest amounts had been blocked by Britain with 400 million dollars, the Bahamas with 85 million dollars, the Cayman Islands with more than 20 million dollars and Japan with more than 14 million dollars.
Other countries blocking money were Senegal, Canada, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, the Netherlands, Egypt, Germany and Bahrain, he said. Other countries may also have blocked money.
AFP
