A Swiss lawyer on Monday rejected a newspaper report that he was involved in managing Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's hidden fortune abroad.
The British newspaper The Sunday Times reported on Sunday that Elio Borradori helped funnel payments to the Iraqi leader from arms deals and other contracts for about a decade.
US officials estimate Saddam channelled between four and seven billion pounds(6.3 and 11 billion dollars, 4.9 and 10.2 billion euros) into accounts around the world, which must now be tracked down.
"I have never dealt with Saddam Hussein's fortune and I never met him," Borradori told the Swiss news agency ATS. "I did have contacts with some of his personal staff and especially with his nephew, Saad al-Mahdi, whose financial interests I managed in Lugano," he added.
The newspaper reported that al-Mahdi controlled an account dubbed "Satan" with the Banca del Gottardo in the Bahamas.
The Lugano-based bank said on Monday that it had found no record of the account at its subsidiary in the Bahamas. Borradori confirmed that al-Mahdi was executed when he was summoned to Baghdad shortly after his marriage in Paris. He had been accused of embezzling the Iraqi leader's funds.
"I tried to stop him from going, but in vain. As soon as he arrived in Iraq, he was beheaded," he added.
Borradori's Lugano-based consultancy had managed about 400 offshore companies in offshore havens such as Liechtenstein and Panama before it was declared bankrupt in the early 1990s.
In February 2002, the 78 year-old lawyer received an 18-month suspended prison sentence after being accused of embezzling some of his clients' funds.
A psychological evaluation ordered by the court also questioned Borradori's mental health, and accorded him diminished responsibility.
According to the newspaper, the former banker could not remember details of his work for Saddam. The Swiss government last week said that it hoped to have a "clearer picture" of any Iraqi funds that might be held in accounts in Switzerland after it ordered banks, lawyers and accountants to declare them.
A freeze on transfers to Iraq implemented for more than 12 years under UN sanctions had been aimed at stopping money flowing back to Saddam Hussein's regime.
AFP
