Posted on 10/30/2012 8:32:01 PM PDT by Rabin
The U.S. Special Inspector General in Baghdad fear 41.6 billion ( U.S. tax dollars ) is now leaving (funneled out) of country per year...
(Excerpt) Read more at stripes.com ...
Rab can but wonder.
Cut off their money. Let them fend for themselves otherwise we are dumping good money down a bad hole. Ragheads will be ragheads (I know, I know they are not theoretically ragheads ... but to me all muslims are ragheads).
Corruption is Rampant in this administration.
Read the entire article. Iraqi dinars are being exchanged for dollars by the central bank. It's not clear where the central bank is getting the dollars -- probably from us.
But what happens next is the dollars are being taken out of Iraq -- most likely to Iran, to circumvent the economic sanctions.
It’s not clear where the central bank is getting the dollars — probably from us.
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More likely from the oil they export—because that biz is denominated in dollars.
So Iraqi middlemen then swap their dinars for dollars and then trade something else to the Iranians for dollars ship it direct if they’re paid in dinars directly by the Iranians.
The trade will be very profitable because the Iranian currency has absolutely collapsed against the dollar in a way the Iraqi dinar has not.
I would agree...Iranian middle-men are turning to Iraqi middle-men, and moving the cash. I don’t see nothing wrong with this.
I think the gist of the article is that a lot of money is leaving the country (and dollars are just what you can spend outside Iraq, so you have to convert it to get away with it). Money leaving the country is a concern because it reduces capital available for investment to grow the economy, so economists monitor it. Law enforcement and intel services also keep an eye on money flows, for both predictive and forensic reasons.
No doubt some of the recent big increase is due to Iranians and the Iranian Gov’t skirting sanctions, where the Iraqis are actually making a commission of some sort on other people’s money. If Maliki will allow Iranian supply convoys and overflights to Syria, banking transactions should not be a showstopper.
Iraq has a world class problem of its own with corruption and embezzlement within the Iraqi Government itself - real chart toppers. I would not be surprised if the ministers bump into each other more in Dubai around their new mansions than they do in Baghdad. In addition to widespread personal graft, militias and political groups have reputedly used their political positions to siphon off funds for their operations.
So it may be money laundering to evade the sanctions on Iran, an upsurge in funding something big like Syrian rebels and/or Syrian Gov’t, or a bunch of rich folks in Iran or Iraq getting their money out in anticipation of something (e.g. war, regime change, economic collapse).
but thier money is worth nothing
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