Tweet
It was a signature of Bush-era incompetence in Iraq. $6.6 billion in reconstruction funds, loaded up on pallets and sent into Baghdad, never to be seen again. Where did it go? Who received the money? How could $6.6 billion go missing?
Years later, the government has come up with an answer. It went to the Central Bank of Iraq.
The Coalition Provisional Authority, created by the U.S. to run Iraq after the invasion, controlled more than $20.7 billion during its 14-month life, including $6.6 billion held when it was dissolved on June 28, 2004.
“That money is not missing,” said Inspector General Stuart Bowen in a telephone interview.
A 2010 Bowen audit couldn’t account for the money. Today’s report says “sufficient evidence exists showing almost all” the $6.6 billion was transferred to the central bank.
Just a few months ago, the LA Times reported that the money may have been stolen. Bowen says that’s not true.
We don’t yet have an accounting of what “almost all” means. Just how much of the $6.6 billion fell off the turnip truck? But for now, Stuart Bowen, who has been a generally competent inspector general as far as I know, has ended the debate. He said that the Iraqis have to answer for the missing money, not the Americans, who delivered it to the central bank as they were told.
This leads to the question, “Why didn’t anyone check with the Central Bank of Iraq first?” Indeed, several other deposits from the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Central Bank of Iraq have come into question, with missing documentation and a lack of a clear timeline on the transfer. There were also other deposits or findings of money, like the $217 million found by the Department of Defense in a vault at Saddam’s Presidential palace, that have not been fully accounted for.
And this has nothing to do with the nearly $60 billion in contracting funds lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Clearly, the process under the CPA of distributing reconstruction money and other funds in Iraq was not at all smooth. But a lingering symbol of the imperial Keystone Kops of the Bush era has been answered, for now.
3 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About FDL News Desk
I do not accept this explanation.
remember this? March 2007, corpwatch.
” smugglers are suspected to be diverting an estimated billions of dollars worth of crude onto tankers because the oil metering system that is supposed monitor how much crude flows into and out of ABOT and KAAOT – has not worked since the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Officials blame the four-year delay in repairing the relatively simple system on “security problems.” Others point to the failed efforts of the two U.S. companies hired to repair the southern oil fields, fix the two terminals, and the meters: Halliburton of Houston, Texas, and Parsons of Pasadena, California”
Oh, that $6.6 billion? You should have just asked us!
W.C. Fields walks into a bar, sits down and asks the barkeep, “say did I spend $50 in here last night?” Barkeep, “why yes you did”. W.C. Fields, “Thank God! I thought I’d lost it”