An alleged corruption scandal in Iraq's finance ministry was behind the dramatic raid on the Baghdad home of Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), coalition officials said Friday.
Iraqi police and US troops who early on Thursday burst into his villa, as well as the INC headquarters nearby, seized items including computers and documents.
Chalabi, a prominent member of the US-appointed governing council, says the raid was a reprisal for his growing criticisms of the US role in Iraq.
Yesterday coalition officials suggested instead that senior members of Chalabi's INC -- a US-funded group that opposed former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein -- were involved in a scam earlier this year when cash went missing from the finance ministry.
The money apparently vanished when the old currency was replaced by new banknotes. The finance ministry found that money given out by banks during the changeover exceeded cash handed in, by the equivalent of about US$21.5 million. In many cases, counterfeit old dinars had been exchanged for genuine new ones.
Iraqi police initially arrested more than a dozen bank tellers, who were accused of fraud.
But in March, Sabah Nouri, a leading member of the INC and the head of the ministry's bank audit, was arrested. He has been in jail ever since, and coalition officials insist that the raid on Chalabi's villa was directly connected with the continuing investigation.
US officials say the Iraqi police were looking for 15 people in connection with "fraud, kidnapping, and associated matters," though they do not include Chalabi.
The kidnapping allegation is thought to relate to the detention of the bank tellers.
Coalition sources recently said Chalabi had insisted on having the old currency incinerated, rather than buried as originally planned -- with the incineration contract going to one of his associates. There have been claims that not all the money was destroyed.
This week the Pentagon announced it was ending monthly payments of US$40,000 to the INC for supplying intelligence. The organization has received a total of about US$33 million from the state department and US$6 million from the defense intelligence agency.
Last night members of the governing council held an emergency meeting and condemned Thursday's raid as a "violation."
"This is largely between the INC and America. But this is a violation of the governing council's rules," a council member, Mahmoud Othman, said.
"He is a member of the council. They should have told us about it. It isn't good," Othman said.
Asked why Chalabi and the US had fallen out, he said: "Lots of people including myself have been criticizing the US. The difference is that I haven't had any money from them."
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in