The Greatest Corruption Game.. How Iran Loots Iraq’s Money?

The Greatest Corruption Game.. How Iran Loots Iraq’s Money?

12-29-2022

The Iraqi dinar is witnessing a significant decline against the dollar, but it is a decline that serves the interests of militia leaders affiliated with Iran, who were assigned the task of penetrating the global banking system through Iraqi banks.

BAGHDAD – The devaluation of the Iraqi dinar against the dollar, and its “treatment” after that, and then its decline again, is nothing but a repetition of an old game that began under the government of Nouri al-Maliki between 2006 and 2014, and continues to this day after establishing solid rules for it.

Al-Qaeda is a group of private banks that are under the management of party and militia leaders, and work in favor of Iran, and make speculations and transfers that go to Iran directly through its banks in Iraq, and some money goes to Jordan and Turkey, before it leaks to other international banks, by taking advantage of a window Selling currencies opened by the Central Bank of Iraq. As well as by taking advantage of the “facilities” provided by the bank to companies and other private banks to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars daily.

The private banks that emerged after the US invasion of Iraq have become one of the largest phenomena in Iraq. Although it has no real economic justification, currency trading has become a sufficient justification for its activities.

The phenomenon of private banks.
Among the most prominent banks that arose during the first years of the occupation were: “The Tigris and Euphrates Bank for Development and Investment” (established in 2005, with a capital of 112 billion dinars), and the “Islamic Cooperation Bank for Investment” (established in 2007, with a capital of 112 dinars). One billion dinars), the Cihan Bank for Islamic Investment and Finance (established in 2008, with a capital of 225 billion dinars), and the National Islamic Bank (established in 2008, with a capital of 251 billion dinars). Until the end of the era of Nouri al-Maliki’s government, more than 276 banks, investment companies, and financial transfers emerged. Among the most prominent of these were the “Islamic World Bank”, “Al-Janoub Islamic Bank” and “Al-Wefaq Islamic Bank for Investment and Finance”, which were established in 2016 with a capital of 250 billion dinars each.

This is in addition to dozens of exchange and currency exchange networks, so that it is believed that a giant architectural and developmental renaissance movement is moving in Iraq, while the reality remained saying that Iraq did not build a new hospital, nor built a bridge, nor schools, and basic services declined, until Iraq is no longer able to cover its electricity needs, thousands of production plants were disrupted.

With the large number of banks, it is natural for pro-Iranian governments to open the way for Iranian banks to establish work centers for them in Iraq.

With the large number of Iraqi banks, it was natural for pro-Iranian governments to open the way for Iranian banks to establish work centers for them in Iraq, such as “Parsian Bank”, “Bank of Iran” and “Melli Iran”, to serve as a major “bridge”. For money transfers in favor of Tehran.

Many private banks in Iraq were established with loans provided by the Central Bank. And it was paid through speculation, which made hundreds of billions of dinars dissipate in actual terms, and the financing of those banks became free. In the sense that the bank, which was established with borrowed capital and paid its installments through speculation, the results of which were prepared in advance, now owns those funds for free.

This was the first plundering base, or the cornerstone, of what will turn into a permanent mechanism for smuggling money from Iraq to Iran. It proved to be more effective than all other acts of corruption, especially since its operations did not involve egregious violations of the law.

Over the years, the Central Bank has been organizing “auctions” to sell dollars and buy dinars, or vice versa, according to prices known in advance by speculators or decided by the “long hand” of the Central Bank. It provides a net profit between one auction and another, estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars in each speculative operation. Until the Central Bank ended up standing on the brink of bankruptcy between 2014 and 2019, and the Iraqi dinar continued to record collapse after collapse.

These operations are known to the United States as a violation of sanctions imposed on Iran, but it has been unable or unwilling to stop them. In May 2019, US Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Marshall Billingslea presented a file to Iraqi officials that contained a list of Iranian companies and banks that defrauded US sanctions through Iraq, and demanded that they stop dealing with them. He threatened to impose sanctions on Baghdad if it did not work to stop the activities of the banned Iranian parties.

120 billion dollars, the value of the surplus in the Iraqi treasury, gathered from the increase in oil revenues

The American demands have already been met, to stop the activity of some banks, which served as a “scapegoat” for banks and other money smuggling networks to continue their activities.

The list of banks that took advantage of the “currency selling window” and were sanctioned, placed under guardianship, or blacklisted by the US Treasury is very long. They include the “Al-Huda Bank” owned by Representative Hamad Al-Moussawi, because he used three subsidiaries owned by himself to transfer $6.5 billion, in the period between 2012-2015, as well as “Noor Iraq Islamic Bank” owned by Hassan Nasser Jaafar Al-Lami, and “Al-Mahj Company.” for money transfer”, and the “Islamic Middle East Bank” owned by Ali Muhammad Ghulam, and “Al-Nada Company for Money Transfer” owned by Haider Ghulam, who owned the “Al-Sharq Bank” in 2012. And the “Iraqi Union Bank” owned by the brothers Aqil and Ali Muften, and “ The Economy Bank for Investment, owned by Saadi Wahib Saihoud, the Bank of Erbil, owned by Fayed Abdel-Amir Hassoun Al-Waeli, and the United Bank for Investment, owned by Hassan Nasser Jaafar Al-Lami and Fadel Al-Dabbas, who was prosecuted by Interpol in a memorandum issued in 2018.

Preventing these banks, or placing them under guardianship, did not prevent the emergence of other new banks that achieve the same purpose, which is to exploit the currency sale auctions organized by the Central Bank.

In 2005, the law allowed the central bank to sell $75 million a day. However, the bank is now able, according to the amendments to the law, to sell between 150 and 200 million dollars per day. This provides a permanent attrition mechanism that eventually allows hundreds of billions of dollars to leak out. The “discharge” operations were part of the $400 billion that former Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said had been “lost” from the books!

Money transfer course to Iran

What is happening now is the same as it has always been. It is that the Central Bank sold dollars at a price of 1450 dinars for one dollar, so the price of the dinar decreased to about 1750 dinars, and it will return to buy less dollars at the new price, and so on. Tens of millions of “profits” are made daily, in an endless cycle, and are specially designed to transfer money to Iran as the “biggest speculator.”

But Iran is not the only destination to which the money leaks. Some of them can pass through Jordanian or Turkish banks. But in the end it serves the same purpose. The Special Finance Committee in the Iraqi Parliament said in a report issued in August 2015 that an Iraqi bank bought $8.8 billion from the Central Bank, through hard currency auctions offered by the Central Bank in the period between 2012-2015.

He transferred it to three Jordanian banks, with $6.455 billion for the first bank, $1.8 billion for the second bank, and more than half a billion dollars for the third bank. The report stated that “a government bank smuggled more than $14.3 billion into Jordan alone” (or more than Jordan’s annual budget). The committee’s report said, “Through the account statement, it became clear that this government bank sent an amount of more than $5.5 billion to an exchange company in Amman.”

Banks were established with loans from the Central Bank, then the loans were repaid with speculations that made the loans free grants

Money smuggling operations include fake commercial contracts to import from abroad, allowing some companies to obtain dollars, to buy equipment and goods from Iran at prices higher than their real price. This is in addition to the fact that Iraq’s markets are open, without any restrictions, to Iranian goods. Instead of the Iranians who visit Iraq on some religious occasions carrying foreign currencies, they carry Iraqi dinars sold to them by Iranian banks. This has become an officially established rule, as the governor of the Central Bank of Iran said on the seventh of last September that local Iranian banks will sell the Iraqi dinar and that they have “quantities” of it.

With the outbreak of protests last September, the price of the Iranian rial began a further collapse. As it amounted to 382 thousand riyals for one dollar. But it is now about 41,000 riyals per dollar. Iranian merchants and citizens rush to exchange their money and savings for dollars, in order to preserve their value. This prompted the Central Bank of Iran and its subsidiaries and agents in Iraq to emulsify all that could be emulsified from dollars in Iraq, on the one hand to support the riyal, and on the other hand to cover the growing demand for dollars. Since Iran retains large quantities of Iraqi dinars, selling them in high volume is the reason that led to the collapse of their prices in Iraq, while several billion dollars were transferred, at record speed, to Iran.

There are no commercial operations in this matter, nor government buying and selling deals. But it is a process of rapid depletion of funds, in a way that appears legal, and those responsible for it cannot be prosecuted, because they took money from Iraqi banks that these banks themselves offer through legitimate “outlets”. It would serve as a system of “lawful theft”, sanctioned by the Iraqi government itself, in a game of “legal” corruption that is the greatest in history. As no country, in the four corners of the earth, has been exposed to acts of systematic and continuous looting, as much as Iraq has been exposed to.

Today, the Iraqi treasury has a surplus of about $120 billion, gathered from high oil revenues. But it will not be long before another Adel Abdul-Mahdi comes to say that it has been “lost” from the books.

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