Free Republic

<p>The $65 million seized by U.S. officials from a Baghdad-bound airplane yesterday may be used to pay the relatives of those killed in the September 11 attacks.</p> <p>Officials stymied the loading of the money after a federal court ordered that the cash remain in the United States until it can decided if it can be used to compensate the victim's families. The money was converted assets from the Saddam Hussein government.</p>

<p>June 19, 2003 -- BAGHDAD, Iraq - U.S. troops raided two farmhouses near Tikrit north of Baghdad yesterday and seized millions of American dollars, British pounds, euros and Iraqi dinars apparently designated, in part, to pay bounties to kill American soldiers, a senior U.S. general said.</p>

In the hunt for Saddam Hussein's billions, investigators have identified five networks of more than 100 companies used to launder money skimmed from Iraqi oil sales. Saddam's gangster regime set up shell companies in Switzerland, Jordan, Lichtenstein, Luxembourg and Panama, according to investigators. Those company networks and their banking affiliations were used to enrich the former Iraqi strongman, his sons Uday and Qusay, and other family members. "Ultimately, the money was stolen from the Iraqi people," said Taylor Griffin, spokesman for the Treasury Department, which is heading the government's laundering probe along with U.S. Customs, the Secret Service and various...

SCATTERED AMONG the loose papers and bound files unearthed last week at the Iraqi Foreign Ministry in Baghdad was "letter no. 140/4/5," labeled "Confidential and Personal" and addressed to "The President's Office--Secretariat." The letter concerns George Galloway, a pro-Saddam member of the British Parliament, who founded a charity known as the Mariam Appeal, ostensibly to aid Iraqi children suffering under U.N. sanctions. The missive, from the Iraqi Intelligence Service, is a request that money be funneled directly to Galloway. It reads in part: His projects and future plans for the benefit of [Iraq] need financial support to become a motive...