- (AFP) - Hours before the US-led war on Iraq began, the
nation's former dictator Saddam Hussein withdrew more than one billion
dollars from its central bank, funds US officials believe he and supporters
are using today to support armed resistance to coalition forces, ABC News
reported.
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- The money was removed on March 19 on three flatbed trucks,
after Saddam requested the money's release from the bank in a simple, handwritten
letter found by US agents in Iraqi Central Bank files.
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- The note requests the release of 920 million US dollars,
90 million euros, "to protect and save them from American aggression".
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- US officials conclude the note was from Saddam based
on interviews with captured Iraqi officials, including the former Finance
Minister Hekmat Ibrahimal al-Azzawi, ABC News said.
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- "Security guards employed by the Central National
Bank of Iraq loaded the money in stainless steel briefcases," the
report quoted Jeff Sandy, a supervisory special agent with the Internal
Revenue Service's criminal investigation unit, as saying.
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- Increments of between one and two million dollars per
stainless steel case were used, he said.
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- While US forces have recovered most of the cash, US officials
say around 132 million dollars is still missing, ABC News said.
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- And the funds contained in some 33 boxes of newly printed
US 100 dollar bills may have been used in recent attacks on US forces,
according to the report.
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- US Treasury and Homeland Security agents are also investigating
how large numbers of brand new 100 dollar bills from the Federal Reserve
Banks in Washington and New York ended up in Baghdad, despite US sanctions.
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