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Allawi's Billion Dollar Buddy
How does Allawi pay for his lucrative contract with GOP lobbying powerhouse Barbour Griffith & Rogers? The obvious guess is that his old buddies at the CIA pay for him. But he may not need the agency's cash. One member of his coterie is suspected of participating in what an Iraqi public-corruption judge calls "possibly the largest robbery in the world" -- the theft of approximately $1 billion from the Iraqi treasury.
In mid-2004, Hazem Shaalan had it all: he had risen from being a small businessman in London before the war to becoming Ayad Allawi's defense minister. (Shaalan had been a member of Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, but the relationship between Shaalan and Chalabi became acrimonious, with the INC accusing Shaalan of being a Baathist spy.) The defense ministry was Allawi's single biggest priority, as he owed his appointment -- made jointly by the U.S. and the United Nations -- to his promise of restoring stability to the insurgency-wracked country. Shaalan came through for him, fully backing the joint U.S.-Allawi decision to fight the Mahdi Army in the Shiite holy city of Najaf in August 2004.
But that wasn't all Shaalan did at the defense ministry.
Shortly after the January 2005 elections left Allawi and Shaalan out of power, a wide-ranging audit of the defense ministry found nearly $1 billion missing. Iraq's finance minister, Ali Allawi -- Allawi's cousin -- discovered that Shaalan had taken practically the entire defense procurement budget from Iraq's Central Bank and had little to show for it aside from obsolete Polish and Pakistani weaponry. A "charitable" accounting found that perhaps $200 million worth of usable equipment for the Iraqi Army resulted from the $1.3 billion fund.
What happened to the rest of the fund and other missing defense-ministry cash remains a mystery. But Iraqi auditors determined that around $1 billion moved from the Central Bank to accounts in Jordan held by a man named Naer Jumaili, an Iraqi businessman whom Shaalan made his unofficial procurement chief. Jordanian banks refused requests from Ali Allawi and other investigators to peruse the details of Jumaili's accounts, so it remains unclear exactly how much money they possess.
Both Jumaili and Shaalan fled Iraq for Amman, where they're dodging warrants: Shaalan has been indicted for fraud and Jumaili for theft. And both men loudly proclaim their innocence. Shaalan claims the charges against him are an Iranian plot.
The former defense minister currently pleads poverty, claiming that he had to sell his Amman villa and move into a small apartment. But reporters from the Times of London have spotted him at customs in London dividing up bundles of cash (in U.S. dollars) between his entourage; he has access to bodyguards and luxury cars in Amman; and in London, he's known to stay at the ultra-posh Dorchester hotel.
More than anything else, Shaalan wants his name cleared. And given his apparent access to a ton of money, he might be able to afford to help pay the $300,000 it costs his old pal Ayad Allawi to forge a Washington-based path back to power.
Josh
Zachary
I can all but guarantee you that the missing Billion dollars was spirited away in Jordanian banks with AMERICAN assistance.
We should have the Justice department open an investi....oh wait.
never mind.
August 24, 2007 12:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't it funny how the money flows in a circular fashion. From a Republican led congress to Iraq and then back into the hands of a Republican led PR firm. If Republicans could manage government as well as the manage corrution we'd all be lot better off.
August 24, 2007 12:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Henk, that is funny. However, the GOP mismanages gov't on purpose to prove their theory that gov't doesn't work.
Dan, I agree that if we wanted to do so, I'm sure we could get info from Jordanian banks, so that does suggest at least possible complicity. It certainly looks very, very bad.
August 24, 2007 12:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
In 2005, Lt General David Petraeus thought that the theft of $1 billion from the Iraqi treasury was none of our business.
From an 8/2/05 Newsday story ,"Irq Investigates Widespread Corruption" by Bassam Mroue about the $1 billion theft:
"Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, the American commander in charge of training and equipping the Iraqi military, declined to comment on the corruption claims, saying it was a matter to be resolved by the Iraqi government."
When I first read that story, I had never heard of Petraeus but my reaction was that either he was a fucking idiot or he was on the take.
Corruption - the untold story about our failure in Iraq.
August 24, 2007 12:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
So is this how they're paying for all the domestic surveillance? War - it all flows into and out of - the war.
August 24, 2007 12:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sure a lot of these types of individuals are strolling around the Middle East or Europe (think Switzerland) with tons of money. Remember the skids of bundled U.S. currency that went missing when Bremmer was running the show.
This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. Yet, there was no outrage in this country--wasn't it $13 billion that disappeared?
August 24, 2007 1:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sure a lot of these types of individuals are strolling around the Middle East or Europe (think Switzerland) with tons of money. Remember the skids of bundled U.S. currency that went missing when Bremmer was running the show.
This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. Yet, there was no outrage in this country--wasn't it $13 billion that disappeared?
August 24, 2007 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm sure a lot of these types of individuals are strolling around the Middle East or Europe (think Switzerland) with tons of money. Remember the skids of bundled U.S. currency that went missing when Bremmer was running the show.
This stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. Yet, there was no outrage in this country--wasn't it $13 billion that disappeared?
August 24, 2007 1:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't believe that the GOP mismanages government on purpose to prove that government doesn't work, although it makes kind of a convenient, after-the-fact rationale. Instead, I believe that this particular bunch just has no interest in actual governance. Power, yes. Rewarding friends and cronies, yes. Punishing enemies, yes. Stealing as much as they can carry away, yes. But actually running the country, not so much.
August 24, 2007 1:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
TheraP: what is the latest with DM? Still posting or gone silent? I've been trying to catch up with the story at DKOS but hit a wall sometime around the middle of this month's postings.
August 24, 2007 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
And how much of this money is possibly recycled as undocumented campaign contributions to the Rethuglican machine?
August 24, 2007 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Would someone please file a federal criminal complaint
against George W. Bush ET AL..
Evidently, nobody (except me) remembers how the B.C.C.I. scandal broke.
August 24, 2007 3:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
I've been posting online for several years asking where the Iraqi money went!
I'LL SAY IT AGAIN FOR THE 100TH TIME!!
THE INVASION OF IRAQ WAS ALSO A BANK ROBBERY!!
Why are the progressive websites so slow on the uptake on this story?
August 24, 2007 7:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
Info on this defense ministry fellow absconding with $1 billion, and the crap he'd bought instead, was something I read about a year ago.
I'm happy to see it surfacing once again. Maybe this time it will be noticed by more vocal persons. Looks like when a critical mass is reached, traditional media will cover the story.
August 24, 2007 8:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Shades of Ahamed Chalabi.
Chalabi, best buddy of the Bush administration, was accused of stealing $20 million dollars from the Jordanian bank he headed while living in exile during Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq.
Chalabi fled before he was arrested and charged, moving to England. While there he set up the Iraqi National Congress (INC), which plotted the overthrow of Hussein's Iraqi regime, and found willing partners in this plan in the Project for a New American Century, as well as the later Bush administration.
Pre-Bush's Iraq War, the INC fed misinformation, disinformation and outright lies to the Bush administration, which then passed along the Chalabi's and the INC's lies to the American public.
So, where's Ahmed Chalabi today. After not being able to take the helm of Iraq after the Bush invasion, although the neo-con Republicans wanted him to replace Hussein, Chalabi was reported to have last been involved in the new Iraqi government, just not as el supremo dictator.
One thing we do know, he's still wanted in Jordan, so it is doubtful that he's gone to Amman with some of his fellow thieves, who've soaked American taxpayers for so much money.
The Bush administration sure knows how to pick them. But, I guess, it takes a bunch of thieves to know a bunch of thieves. Or maybe another way to say it: birds of a felonious feather flock together.
August 25, 2007 1:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
A small group of Americans have become traitors and sold out the Republic to the Bushes, Cheneys, Chalabis, Shaalans Allawis of the world!
The presidential candidates of BOTH parties can't WAIT to get THEIR Cut of the Action when 1 of them becomes president. As for the Democrats they can't find their INTEGRITY or ETHICS. All THEY can do is line up at the Trough with the Republicans and slurp a big meal of EARMARKS!
Americans have let America become a Moral TOILET!
The moistly Republicans will have only themselves to blame when the Nukes go off in Iran!
August 25, 2007 2:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
jane >"And how much of this money is possibly recycled as undocumented campaign contributions to the Rethuglican machine?"
Ah yes, Corruption, the untold success story of Iraq
Why are you surprised ?
"Stop quoting the laws to us. We carry swords." - Pompey
August 25, 2007 10:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
$300k is nothing for a millionaire like Allawi.
He made his money working in the oil business in Yemen (with american oil corporations) in the 80s.
Even his party is run like a business; his weekly newspaper is money-making, his radio station advert slots are the most sought after, 300k over 6 months is nothing for a party which has offfices all over Iraq.
Why don't you ask where SCIRI (Hakim) gets his money for at least THREE satellite channels, or Da'wa gets their money for their satellite channel, or any of the Sunni parties get their money for their satellite channels?!
and let's not forget that they all have MORE than one daily newspaper in Baghdad.
August 26, 2007 4:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Anyone heard an estimate of the value of the Babylonian and Mesapotamian antiquities that went missing was worth?
Somewhere "out there" is a few billion dollars worth of history, art and manuscripts that can never really be valued monetarily.
Now, a very small, wealthy circle knows where it all has disappeared to...
August 26, 2007 4:51 PM | Reply | Permalink