Posted on 06/21/2003 11:09:01 AM PDT by Kaslin
GENEVA (AP) - Iraqi assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been found in European and Middle Eastern banks in a global search for Saddam Hussein's riches, but little if anything has his name on it.
Lebanon, Britain and Switzerland have each found about half a billion dollars in Iraqi assets, but it is not clear to whom the money belongs beyond official Iraqi government accounts.
"There's no way Saddam Hussein would have opened an account in his own name," said James Nason of the Swiss Bankers Association, whose members are required to report any suspicious accounts to the government of Switzerland.
The United States, which launched the search for Saddam's wealth the day after the U.S.-led invasion started last March, acknowledges that finding the hidden assets will be very difficult.
"The greatest challenge lies in identifying and tracing the flow of funds that Hussein has stolen and injected into the international financial system," David D. Aufhauser, general counsel of the U.S. Treasury Department, told Congress last month.
Estimates of Saddam's wealth have ranged from $2 billion to $40 billion. The U.S.-funded International Campaign to Indict Iraqi War Criminals, said much of the money was sent out of Iraq through a network of people who were given the money to invest or keep the money until it was needed.
Treasury Undersecretary John B. Taylor told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this month that the total Iraqi assets found and frozen outside the United States since March 20 was $1.2 billion. That comes on top of $1.1 billion frozen outside the United States since 1990.
Iraqi assets found outside the United States - although it is not clear that all of them have been frozen - add up to $3 billion.
Aufhauser said the U.S. government, which has dispatched teams of investigators to other countries, had pressed more than 50 governments to join in the search.
"International assistance is needed to track the illicit assets of Hussein, his family, his cronies and the front companies and straw men they used," Aufhauser said.
The United States is treating all assets from Saddam's regime as suspect. Washington has already sent Iraqi assets it has seized in U.S. banks to Iraq to help pay for essential services.
Other countries are awaiting United Nations instructions on exactly whose money to seize.
But the Bush administration says it is pleased with the response of other countries.
"Countries around the world, not just the United States, understand the needs of the Iraqi people and understand that this money is to be returned to the Iraqi people," U.S. Treasury Department spokesman Taylor Griffin told The Associated Press. "Countries understand that, countries are responding, and we are very pleased to see that."
The Security Council resolution on postwar Iraq passed last month requires countries to seize funds from the government as well as from officials of the regime and "immediately cause their transfer to the Development Fund for Iraq," which is to be controlled by Britain and the United States.
However, the Security Council still hasn't released a list of names so that governments can act.
Othmar Wyss, spokesman for the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, said Switzerland already has protectively frozen suspect assets but is awaiting the formal U.N. blacklist.
"We want to avoid giving figures that will subsequently have to be corrected downward because they involve accounts of people who are not on the list of the U.N. sanctions committee," Wyss told the AP.
On Tuesday, the United States will forward a list of more than 50 senior Iraqi officials whose assets should be frozen to a U.N. Security Council committee, council diplomats said Friday in New York. It is similar to the list of the 55 most wanted former members of Saddam's regime, which was given to troops in the form of a card deck, the diplomats said on condition of anonymity.
Security Council members have three days to submit objections, and if they don't the list will be issued to all governments with orders to seize assets of those named.
The Swiss National Bank disclosed Wednesday that as of the end of last year Swiss banks and financial managers were holding $315 million in Iraqi assets. There were no details on who the owners were.
The British Treasury has frozen $650 million of Iraqi assets. Of that, $455 million was Iraqi government money and $195 million belonged to individuals.
The British, too, are following Security Council instructions on what to do with the money, a spokesman said.
Lebanese Central Bank Governor Riyadh Salameh said Lebanon has frozen millions of dollars in Iraqi government funds.
"It is up to the legitimate Iraqi authorities, when they are formed, to dispose of them as they see fit," Salameh said in a statement.
U.S. officials said the amount frozen in Lebanon was $495 million.
Jordan has about $1 billion in Iraqi money, the bulk of it in letters of credit held by Saddam's government to facilitate trade, an official told the AP on condition of anonymity.
But two officials denied that Jordanian banks were holding any assets of Saddam or his family.
Saudi Arabia says its relations with Iraq, which soured over the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, made it unlikely that any of Saddam's funds are there. It claims to have tight financial regulations that would have made it very difficult for Saddam to transfer funds into the kingdom, even under fake names.
The Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, where 130 central banks keep foreign reserves, has been blocking Iraqi assets under U.N. sanctions since 1991, said spokeswoman Margaret Critchlow.
She declined to say how much was involved, but Aufhauser said the bank is holding about $570 million.
Aufhauser said some of the money might have to be paid to legitimate third-party claimants, but that the rest would be sent to Iraq.
Within hours of the start of the U.S. led attack on Iraq, the U.S. government confiscated $1.7 billion in Iraqi assets that had been frozen in the United States since the first Gulf War.
The money was turned over to a special account with the U.S. Federal Reserve in New York. Much of that money has already been flown to Iraq to pay pensions, government salaries and provide funds for Iraqi ministries, officials said.
Taylor said U.S. forces also have seized $900 million in currency in Iraq, as well as $350 million in currency and gold discovered in vaults at the Central Bank of Iraq.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Jamal Halaby in Amman, Jordan; Sarah El Deeb in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Beth Gardiner in London; and Balz Bruppacher in Bern, Switzerland.
Aufhauser said some of the money might have to be paid to legitimate third-party claimants, but that the rest would be sent to Iraq.
I hope they are not talking about the French, Germans and Russians
Aufhauser said some of the money might have to be paid to legitimate third-party claimants, but that the rest would be sent to Iraq.
I hope they are not talking about the French, Germans and Russians
Ah.........The U.N. Al-Qanadian Baathist (France/Germany) Parties' Banking Network.
Fred's
Where's Fred?
Fred's dead babe. Get on.
prisoner6
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