500 million dollars stolen from Iraqi defense dept

www.cbsnews.com...

It's on 60 Minutes right now.
They took the money and left the country.
They interviewed one former offical on vacation in Paris and
asked him, "If you go back to Baghdad they'll arrest you ?"

"No", he says "They'll kill me."

Of course
Good to see american democracy is achieving its normal procedures..

it would be UN-democratic to presume money isnt being stolen from the public!

I am sure that the various world Mafias have their finger back in Iraq just as they did before. When buying any kind of arms this is who they would be dealing with and there are still a lot of old debts still due from before the war to places like Russia. Of course this is all done with U.N. oversight.

The investigation said basically all of the top Iraqis in the defense ministry quit their jobs and moved abroad. Several have multimillion dollar estates under construction.
They setup a fake company and the funds were deposited into an account which was cleared out. They had an audio tape of the guy they interviewed talking about a 45 million dollar deposit into someone's personal bank account and he's sitting their smiling saying they didn't steal the money that it was just politics. The US and others don't want to go after them because it makes them look bad. The money was supposed to buy the Iraqi army new weapons and equipment and the Iraqi bureaucrats stole it and fled the country. No wonder Iraq is such a disaster. Invading was not a good idea, but they only have themselves to blame for such a mess.

[edit on 23-10-2006 by Schaden]

Originally posted by factfinder38
I am sure that the various world Mafias have their finger back in Iraq just as they did before. When buying any kind of arms this is who they would be dealing with and there are still a lot of old debts still due from before the war to places like Russia. Of course this is all done with U.N. oversight.

No UN oversight. It's purely a US run thing and harks back to the time when the show was run by the CPA, under which $Billions went "missing"

well, its getting even easier to steal money from the americans now that 60 workers hired to keep track of what gets spent have been sacked. that leaves a grand total of 16 people watching out for someones interests.

story

you would think that after rumsfield announced 2.3 trillion dollars were 'unacounted for' on sep 10th 2001, that they would employ a few more people to find those mysterious thieves. i guess thats not in the 'how to fleece a country' handbook though.

This is egregious.
Almost a billion dollars stolen by a handful of people.
I wouldn't doubt they'll eventually pay the price.

"500 million dollars stolen from Iraqi defense dept"

Anyone check this administration's pockets?