Between April 2003 and June 2004 the New York Fed shipped nearly $12 billion in U.S. cash to Baghdad, 484 pallets and about 281 million bills; the House Oversight Committee counted 363 tons. It was Iraqi money, not U.S. tax dollars. For the record $2.4 billion shipment of June 22, 2004, SIGIR audit 12-001 shows $766.4 million was deposited in the Central Bank of Iraq and $1.6 billion was flown to Erbil for the Kurdistan Regional Government. Investigators found no evidence of theft, but no complete answer either.13
363 tons of cash: where did it go? 0:00
From spring 2003 the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shipped nearly $12 billion in U.S. cash to Baghdad in just over a year: 484 pallets, about 281 million bills, flown on C-130 cargo planes.2 The orders grew until a single one, in June 2004, was for $2.4 billion.
Later, auditors found “no assurance” that $8.8 billion had been used as mandated, and in February 2007 Congress put it on the record.14 This was Iraqi money, not U.S. tax dollars: oil revenue and the frozen assets of the former regime. The U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) said there was no alternative to cash. The House Oversight Committee counted 363 tons.12 So where did it go?
One signature: the 2003 order that started it 1:12
On March 20, 2003 the president signed Executive Order 13290: Iraqi government money frozen in American banks since 1990, about $1.7 billion, would be vested in the U.S. Treasury. Treasury directed the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as fiscal agent of the United States, to open a special account, with instructions to come from a single Treasury official.9
The money sat in New York, but the country it belonged to was on the other side of the world.
33 Liberty Street: “How many planes?” 2:01
In April 2003, before the CPA formally existed, a Treasury official called the New York Fed at 33 Liberty Street in lower Manhattan and ordered the first cash: $20 million in small bills. He remembered the reaction on the other end of the line: “The guy just laughed and asked, how many planes do you have?”7
Why Iraq needed cash in 2003 2:39
In spring 2003 Iraq’s banks were shut and there was no way to move money electronically. Years later L. Paul Bremer, who had been put in charge, told Congress under oath: “This was a cash-based economy.” At the end of 2002, he said, inflation was running at 115,000 percent, and the government had been the country’s largest employer, providing about four out of five jobs. “We had to pay Iraqis in cash … wherever in Iraq they lived,” often in U.S. dollars, because there were not enough Iraqi dinars.17
The vault of the Central Bank of Iraq held only $350 million, in gold and waterlogged bank notes.7 It would be cash.
Whose money was it, and who signed for it 3:43
On May 22, 2003 the UN Security Council created the Development Fund for Iraq, fed by Iraqi oil sales. The fund had to be used “in a transparent manner” for “purposes benefiting the people of Iraq,” and it was spent “at the direction of the Authority.”10 CPA Regulation No. 1 gave the Authority “all executive, legislative and judicial authority,” exercised by the Administrator, and Regulation No. 2 added that the New York Fed and Iraq’s central bank would accept payment instructions only from the Administrator or his delegate.11
Years later a congressman asked Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR): “Were these U.S. tax dollars?” “They were not.”1 It was Iraq’s money with one American signature on it. The international board meant to watch the fund did not meet until December 2003, more than six months after the spending began, and its outside auditor started almost a year in.72
The money planes: New Jersey to Andrews to Baghdad 5:12
The CPA’s own procedures manual described the route. It began at Federal Reserve facilities in New Jersey and went to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where the Fed’s responsibility ended: a Defense Department representative accepted the cash on behalf of the CPA.2 A standard pallet held 640 bundles of 1,000 bills, about 1,500 pounds; in $100 bills that is more than $60 million on one pallet. Fed staff counted it in bricks of $400,000.21
Over the whole airlift there were 484 pallets and more than 281 million bills, over 107 million of them $100 notes. The House Oversight Committee, working from Federal Reserve records, put the weight at 363 tons. SIGIR’s own count was 237.3 tons.27 Either figure makes it what SIGIR called “the largest airborne transfer of currency in history.”7
Night at Baghdad airport (2003) 6:39
The pallets flew again and again for more than a year, landing at Baghdad’s airport at night. On the ramp three people counted the currency, one each from the CPA, the Central Bank of Iraq and the Defense Department. The central bank signed a “Shipment of Funds” form with two independent witnesses, and the pallets were driven to the Central Bank of Iraq for deposit.23
Cash for the CPA’s own spending went elsewhere: a vault in the former Republican Palace, the CPA’s headquarters.2
The Federal Reserve record, December 2003 7:25
In all there were 21 shipments totalling almost $12 billion, about $10.2 billion from the oil fund and $1.7 billion from the frozen assets.37 Month by month the orders grew: $20 million in April 2003, hundreds of millions by summer, and on December 12, 2003, $1.5 billion in one shipment. A Federal Reserve email called it “the largest pay out of U.S. currency in Fed history.” That record would last six months.2
Cash inside the country: paying the ministries 7:48
Inside Iraq cash moved by road. CPA advisers loaded bricks nicknamed “footballs” into trucks and Chevy Suburbans and drove them to the ministries. An official National Archives photograph from 2003 shows a pallet with $4.6 million in U.S. dollars being loaded at Baghdad airport for Al Kut, an inside-the-country move.713 Most salaries took a more formal path, from the CPA comptroller to the central bank and out through the Rafidain Bank chain: more than 90 percent of them.7
The cash reached Baghdad. What became much harder to say was where it went next.
No receipts: the palace vault (2003–2004) 8:32
In nine withdrawals, $836 million moved from the oil fund’s Baghdad account into the palace vault, almost half of it in the last two months.2 In 2004 the CPA’s own inspector general audited the cash controls. Field cashiers kept money in safes. One finding reads: “The key was located in an unsecured backpack.” Another cashier left the room with the safe standing open. Of $400 million in field funds, as much as $50 million was cleared without proper receipts.6
The rules had required an independent accounting firm; in April 2004 the CPA reported it had not hired one. A firm paid $1.4 million to review internal controls did not perform the review.2 At the 2007 hearing Congressman Elijah Cummings asked Bremer whether he knew the company was run out of somebody’s house. Bremer said no.1
$8.8 billion “without assurance” 9:44
In January 2005 SIGIR reported on the money given to Iraq’s ministries. The CPA, it found, had disbursed over $8.8 billion “without assurance the monies were properly used or accounted for.”4 On one payroll 8,206 people were listed; auditors could validate 602.4
The minutes of the CPA’s budget board for May 2004 list $500 million with the composition “TBD.” At the hearing Congressman Dennis Kucinich asked whether any audit had found where that half billion went. Bowen answered: “No, we haven’t.”1
The Hilla case: the first court 10:48
Was this only sloppy bookkeeping, or did someone take advantage? In one region that question ended up in a courtroom. In south-central Iraq in 2004 the CPA’s regional office could not account for or support more than $96.6 million; the explanation, in the audit’s words, was that it was “more important to quickly distribute the money to the region than to obtain all necessary documentation.” One cashier was handed about $6.75 million on June 21, 2004, to spend before the handover a week later.5
The region’s comptroller, Robert Stein, had been convicted of federal credit-card fraud in 1996 and was cleared to serve anyway. By SIGIR’s account he took more than $58 million in cash from the palace vault, and later described that vault as “pallet upon pallet of hundred dollar bills”: “When you work around money like that, it becomes ‘so what, it’s just paper.’” He wrote to a contractor, Philip Bloom: “I love to give you money.”7
In 2007 Stein was sentenced to nine years in prison and ordered to forfeit $3.6 million; the charges included bribery, money laundering and conspiracy. According to the Justice Department Bloom laundered more than $2 million in cash stolen from the CPA’s regional office, and was sentenced to 46 months. Eight people were convicted in the case.128 Ninety-six million dollars in one region.
The countdown to June 2004 12:40
In the last six weeks before the handover, more than $5 billion left the CPA’s hands.3 On June 11, 2004 a Federal Reserve staffer emailed colleagues: “Just when you think you’ve seen it all.” The CPA was ordering $2,401,600,000, “in bricks of hundreds,” the email added, “this equates to 1,501.” Four days later the Administrator told the New York Fed that his authority over the fund would end on June 30.2
The flight slips: June 2004 13:26
The flight’s departure slipped from June 18 to June 22. Then another email: “Heads up! We are going to request a second mission, for a 28 June delivery.” A June 28 delivery would have meant opening the Fed’s vault on a Sunday, so the CPA asked to put another billion dollars in hundreds on the June 22 plane “if the U.S. Air Force agrees.” The emails give the reason for the hurry: travel around Baghdad would be restricted from June 28. One reply in the chain carries the subject line “Pocket Change.”2
$2.4 billion: the record shipment of June 22, 2004 14:07
Two shipments, $4 billion in four days, broke December’s record.2 And one of them would be traced by an audit seven years later.3
10:26 a.m., June 28, 2004: the handover 14:54
On June 28, two days ahead of schedule, in a hastily arranged ceremony, the CPA handed sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government. The Federal Reserve logged the moment as 10:26 a.m. Baghdad time, as reported in the press. From then on, an email notes, “the CPA no longer had control over Iraq’s assets.”2
Within hours a CPA colonel sent New York payment orders worth $200 million and a transfer of $800 million. The Fed’s answer: “We are not in a position to honor these instructions.” That was the deadline the cash had been racing, and the two June shipments had already landed.2
Where is the money? The 2007 hearing 15:49
On February 6, 2007 the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the CPA’s decisions; Bremer and Bowen testified. Chairman Henry Waxman: “The question this committee is trying to answer is: what happened to the money.” Bowen, on the cash after it left American hands: “What happened when it left? That is where the question mark is.”1
Congressman Peter Welch read the figure into the record: “There were 363 tons of cash shipped to Iraq on 484 pallets.” Cummings asked: “So, basically, we don’t know where a lot of this money actually ended up, do we?” Bowen said how the ministries used it “is a question that I can’t answer.” Asked by Congressman Stephen Lynch why the June shipments were handled this way, Bremer answered that Iraq’s finance minister had asked in early June “for these shipments of his money,” and that “the Central Bank of Iraq, that is where this money went.” Waxman summed up: “It seems to me inconceivable that we can’t explain what happened to it.”1
The other side of the hearing 17:18
There is another side. Congressman Tom Davis asked Bowen directly: “Was this money stolen?” “No, it was not.” Was there any evidence it was fraudulently appropriated? “No evidence of that.” Bremer defended the cash itself: “There was no alternative. There is no alternative today. There still is no bank transfer system, electronic transfer system in Iraq.” He did not claim it was perfect: “Did we pay some ghost employees? I suppose we probably did.”1
No evidence of theft, then, but no complete answer either.
SIGIR audit 12-001: what the audit says 18:04
Part of the answer arrived four years later. On October 26, 2011 SIGIR published audit 12-001, which traced the cash shipments from New York one by one.3 For the June 22 shipment of $2.4 billion, records show only $766.4 million was deposited in the Central Bank of Iraq’s account in Baghdad. The remaining $1.6 billion was handed to a representative of the Central Bank of Kurdistan and flown from Baghdad’s airport to Erbil. According to the audit the CPA Administrator directed the transfer to cover budget shortfalls of the Kurdistan Regional Government, and SIGIR describes it as a policy decision.3
The audit does not say this money was stolen. But in the 2007 hearing record the words “Kurdistan” and “Erbil” do not appear.1
The same audit found more gaps: in December 2003, $150 million “improperly given” to Iraq’s finance minister at Baghdad’s airport; in October 2003, $400 million with no documents showing it arrived in Baghdad or was deposited; and for the $1 billion and $2.4 billion shipments, missing airport receipts. The CPA’s books still show the money going into the central bank’s control. And the $6.6 billion often called “missing”? The audit found almost all of it was transferred to Iraq’s central bank.3
The answer, and where the question mark is 19:51
Why cash? Because there was no other way to pay a country whose banks had stopped working. Where did it go? Mostly to Iraq’s central bank, its ministries and the Kurdistan Regional Government, for salaries, pensions and running costs. How it was spent after that is where the paper runs thin.8
SIGIR’s final verdict was “poor controls, weak accountability, and limited documentation.” Bowen wrote that “waste was the paramount problem.”8 At Baghdad’s airport the cash was handed over. After that, in Bowen’s words, is “where the question mark is.”1
Full transcript
0:00 · 363 tons of cash: where did it go?
Spring, two thousand three. The Federal Reserve starts flying cash to Iraq.
In just over a year: nearly twelve billion dollars. Four hundred eighty-four pallets, flown into Baghdad on C one-thirty cargo planes. Two hundred eighty-one million bills. Then the orders grew.
One Federal Reserve email: "Just when you think you've seen it all..." Two point four billion dollars, in a single order. Later, auditors found "no assurance" that eight point eight billion was used as mandated. In February two thousand seven, Congress put it on the record.
This was Iraqi money: oil revenues, and frozen assets of the former regime. The C-P-A, the U.S.-led authority in Baghdad, said there was no alternative. Three hundred sixty-three tons of cash. So where did it go?
1:12 · One signature: the 2003 order
March twentieth, two thousand three. Washington. The president signs an executive order. Iraqi government money, frozen in American banks since nineteen ninety, will now belong to the United States Treasury. About one point seven billion dollars. The Treasury directs the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, as fiscal agent of the United States, to open a special account. Instructions for that account, will come from a single Treasury official.
The money sits in New York. But the country it belongs to, is on the other side... of the world.
2:01 · 33 Liberty Street
Lower Manhattan. Thirty-three Liberty Street. That April, before the American-led authority in Baghdad formally exists, a Treasury official calls this bank to order the first cash. Twenty million dollars, in small bills. He remembered the reaction... on the other end of the line. "The guy just laughed, and asked: how many planes do you have?" Planes, because the money had to be cash. To see why, you have to land, in Baghdad.
2:39 · Why Iraq needed cash in 2003
Baghdad. Go back to the spring of two thousand three. The country's banks are shut. There is no way to move money electronically. Years later, under oath, the American put in charge, L. Paul Bremer, described it plainly. "This was a cash-based economy." At the end of two thousand two, he said, inflation was running at one hundred fifteen thousand percent. The government had been the country's largest employer, providing about four out of five jobs.
So, in his words... "we had to pay Iraqis in cash... wherever in Iraq they lived." Often in American dollars... because there were not enough Iraqi dinars. And the vault of the Central Bank of Iraq, held only three hundred fifty million dollars, in gold, and waterlogged bank notes. Cash... it would be. But whose cash was it, and who was allowed... to spend it?
3:43 · Whose money was it
May twenty-second, two thousand three. The United Nations Security Council creates the Development Fund for Iraq. Proceeds from Iraqi oil sales... go into it. The fund must be used... "in a transparent manner," for "purposes benefiting the people of Iraq." And it is spent "at the direction of the Authority." The Authority is the CPA, the Coalition Provisional Authority. Its first regulation gives it "all executive, legislative and judicial authority."
One person exercises it: the Administrator. Regulation number two adds the key line. The New York Fed and Iraq's central bank will accept payment instructions only from the Administrator, or someone he delegates. Years later, a congressman put one question to Stuart Bowen, the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, or SIGIR. "Were these U.S. tax dollars?" "They were not." So it was Iraq's money, with one American signature on it.
But the international board meant to watch the fund, did not meet until December, more than six months... after the spending began. Its outside auditor started, almost a year in.
Which leaves a question: while the money flew, who was checking?
5:12 · The money planes
So, how many planes? Follow one shipment. The CPA's own procedures manual described the route. It began at Federal Reserve facilities in New Jersey. From there, to Andrews Air Force Base, in Maryland. At Andrews, the Federal Reserve's responsibility ended. A Defense Department representative accepted the cash on behalf of the CPA. A standard pallet held six hundred forty bundles of a thousand bills each. About fifteen hundred pounds.
So in hundred-dollar bills, that is more than sixty million dollars on one pallet. Fed staff counted it in bricks of four hundred thousand dollars.
Over the whole airlift: four hundred eighty-four pallets. More than two hundred eighty-one million bills, over a hundred seven million of them hundred-dollar notes. The House Oversight Committee, working from Federal Reserve records, put the weight at three hundred sixty-three tons. SIGIR's own count: two hundred thirty-seven point three tons. Either figure makes it what SIGIR called "the largest airborne transfer of currency in history."
The committee says, the pallets went in C one-thirty cargo planes. They flew again, and again, for more than a year.
6:39 · Night at Baghdad airport
They landed at Baghdad's airport... at night. On the ramp, three people counted the currency: one from the CPA, one from the Central Bank of Iraq, one from the Defense Department. The central bank signed a "Shipment of Funds" form, with two independent witnesses. Then the pallets were driven... to the Central Bank of Iraq, for deposit. Cash for the CPA's own spending went somewhere else: a vault in the former Republican Palace, the CPA's headquarters.
In all: twenty-one shipments, almost twelve billion dollars. About ten point two billion from the oil fund, and one point seven billion from the frozen assets.
7:25 · The Federal Reserve record, December 2003
Month by month, the orders grew. Twenty million in April. Hundreds of millions by summer.
December twelfth: one point five billion dollars, in one shipment. A Federal Reserve email called it, "the largest pay out of U.S. currency, in Fed history." That record, would last six months.
7:48 · Cash inside the country
This photograph is from two thousand three, at Baghdad's airport. The official caption says it shows "a pallet with four point six million U.S. dollars," headed to Al Kut, inside Iraq. Inside the country, cash moved by road. CPA advisers loaded bricks, nicknamed "footballs," into trucks and Chevy Suburbans, and drove them to their ministries. Most salaries took a more formal path: from the CPA comptroller, to the central bank, then out through the Rafidain Bank chain.
More than ninety percent of them. So the cash reached Baghdad. What became much harder to say, was where it went next.
8:32 · No receipts: the palace vault
The palace vault. In nine withdrawals, eight hundred thirty-six million dollars moved from the oil fund's Baghdad account into it. Almost half came in the last two months. In two thousand four, the CPA's own inspector general audited the cash controls. Field cashiers kept money in safes.
One finding reads: "The key was located in an unsecured backpack." Another cashier left the room, with the safe, standing open. Of four hundred million dollars in field funds, as much as fifty million was cleared, without proper receipts. The rules had required an independent accounting firm. In April two thousand four, the CPA reported it had not hired one. Such services, it said, were "not those required." Yet a firm paid one point four million dollars...
to review internal controls... did not perform the review. At the hearing... Congressman Elijah Cummings asked Bremer... if he knew that company was run out of somebody's house. Bremer said no.
9:44 · $8.8 billion without assurance
The bigger money... went to Iraq's ministries. In January two thousand five, SIGIR reported on that money. The CPA, it found, had disbursed over eight point eight billion dollars, to the ministries, "without assurance the monies were properly used or accounted for." One example. On one payroll, eight thousand two hundred six people were listed. Auditors could validate six hundred two. Then there is a line in the minutes of the CPA's budget board,
May two thousand four: five hundred million dollars.
Its composition: "T-B-D." At the hearing, Congressman Dennis Kucinich asked, if any audit had found where that half a billion dollars went.
Bowen answered: "No, we haven't." Was this only sloppy bookkeeping, or did someone, take advantage of it? In one region of Iraq, that question ended up in a courtroom.
10:48 · The Hilla case
South-central Iraq, two thousand four. Auditors later found that the CPA's regional office there could not account for, or support, more than ninety-six point six million dollars. The explanation, in the audit's words: it was "more important to quickly distribute the money to the region, than to obtain all necessary documentation." One cashier was handed about six point seven five million dollars, on June twenty-first, two thousand four.
The expectation: spend all of it before the handover, a week later. The comptroller for the region was Robert Stein. In nineteen ninety-six, he had been convicted of federal credit-card fraud. He was cleared to serve anyway. By SIGIR's account, he loaded more than fifty-eight million dollars in cash from the palace vault. Later, he described that vault to SIGIR. "Pallet upon pallet... of hundred dollar bills." "When you work around money like that, it becomes...
'so what, it's just paper.'" To a contractor... Philip Bloom... he wrote: "I love to give you money." In two thousand seven, Stein was sentenced to nine years in prison, and ordered to forfeit three point six million dollars. The charges included bribery, money laundering, and conspiracy, among others. According to the Justice Department... Bloom laundered more than two million dollars in cash... stolen from the CPA's regional office.
He was sentenced to forty-six months. Eight people, were convicted in the case. Ninety-six million dollars, in one region. But in the last six weeks before the handover, more than five billion would leave the CPA's hands.
12:40 · The countdown to June 2004
June eleventh, two thousand four. The CPA's authority over the fund is about to end.
You already know when: at ten twenty-six in the morning of June twenty-eighth. The CPA does not. A Federal Reserve staffer emails colleagues. "Just when you think you've seen it all," it begins. The CPA is ordering two billion, four hundred one million, six hundred thousand dollars. "In bricks of hundreds," the email adds, "this equates to one thousand five hundred one." Four days later, the Administrator tells the New York Fed that his authority over the fund ends on June thirtieth.
13:26 · The flight slips
The flight's departure slips, from the eighteenth, to the twenty-second.
Then another email: "Heads up! We are going to request a second mission, for a twenty-eight June delivery." A June twenty-eighth delivery would mean opening the Fed's vault, on a Sunday. So the CPA asks to put another billion dollars... in hundreds... on the June twenty-second plane, "if the U.S. Air Force agrees." The emails give the reason for the hurry: travel around Baghdad would be restricted, from June twenty-eighth.
One reply in the chain... carries the subject line: "Pocket Change."
14:07 · $2.4 billion: the record shipment
Two shipments. Four billion dollars, in the space of four days. That broke December's record. And one of them, would be traced by an audit, seven years later.
14:54 · The handover
June twenty-eighth. Two days ahead of schedule, in a hastily arranged ceremony, the CPA hands sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government. The Federal Reserve logs the moment: ten twenty-six a.m., Baghdad time, as reported in the press. From then on, an email notes, "the CPA no longer had control over Iraq's assets." Within hours, a CPA colonel sends New York payment orders worth two hundred million dollars, and a transfer of eight hundred million.
The Fed's answer: "We are not in a position, to honor these instructions." That was the deadline the cash had been racing. By then, the two June shipments had already landed. Congress would later ask, where they went.
15:49 · The 2007 hearing
February sixth, two thousand seven. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform holds a hearing on the CPA's decisions. Bremer and Bowen testify.
Chairman Henry Waxman: "The question this committee is trying to answer is: what happened to the money." Bowen, on the cash after it left American hands: "What happened when it left? That is where the question mark is."
Congressman Peter Welch: "There were three hundred sixty-three tons of cash shipped to Iraq on four hundred eighty-four pallets." Congressman Elijah Cummings asked it plainly. "So, basically, we don't know where a lot of this money actually ended up, do we?" Bowen said how the ministries used it, "is a question that I can't answer." Congressman Stephen Lynch, on the June shipments: "I just want to ask why. Why did you handle it this way?"
Bremer answered that Iraq's finance minister had asked in early June, "for these shipments of his money." And, he said, "the Central Bank of Iraq, that is where this money went."
Waxman summed up the room: "It seems to me inconceivable that we can't explain what happened to it."
17:18 · The other side of the hearing
There is another side to this, and it matters. Congressman Tom Davis asked Bowen directly: "Was this money stolen?" "No, it was not." Was there any evidence it was fraudulently appropriated? "No evidence of that."
Bremer defended the cash itself: "There was no alternative. There is no alternative today. There still is no bank transfer system, electronic transfer system in Iraq." He did not claim it was perfect, either: "Did we pay some ghost employees? I suppose we probably did." No evidence of theft, then. But no complete answer, either. Part of that answer arrived four years later.
18:04 · SIGIR audit 12-001
October twenty-sixth, two thousand eleven. SIGIR publishes audit twelve-zero-zero-one. It goes back to the cash shipments from New York... one by one. The June twenty-second shipment. Two point four billion dollars. Records show, only seven hundred sixty-six point four million of it was deposited in the Central Bank of Iraq's account in Baghdad. The remaining one point six billion was handed to a representative of the Central Bank of Kurdistan, and flown from Baghdad's airport to Erbil.
According to the audit, the CPA Administrator directed the transfer, to cover budget shortfalls of the Kurdistan Regional Government. SIGIR describes it as a policy decision. The audit does not say this money was stolen. But in the two thousand seven hearing record, the words "Kurdistan" and "Erbil" do not appear. The same audit found more gaps.
December two thousand three: one hundred fifty million dollars "improperly given" to Iraq's finance minister, at Baghdad's airport. October two thousand three... four hundred million dollars... with no documents showing that it arrived in Baghdad or was deposited. For the one-billion and two point four-billion-dollar shipments... the airport receipts were missing. The CPA's books still show the money going into the central bank's control.
And the six point six billion dollars often called "missing"? The audit found almost all of it was transferred to Iraq's central bank.
19:51 · The answer
So, why cash? Because there was no other way, to pay a country whose banks had stopped working. Where did it go? Mostly to Iraq's central bank, its ministries, and the Kurdistan Regional Government, for salaries, pensions and running costs. How it was spent after that is where the paper runs thin. SIGIR's final verdict: "poor controls, weak accountability, and limited documentation." Bowen wrote that "waste was the paramount problem."
At Baghdad's airport, the cash was handed over. After that, in Bowen's words, is "where the question mark is."
American Money History
