(BAGHDAD, IRAQ) — A former United States investigator says between $1.2 billion and $1.6 billion in Iraqi reconstruction funds were stolen after the 2003 American invasion and moved to Lebanon.
The funds, withdrawn from Iraqi government accounts held in the United States, was loaded onto Air Force C-17 transport planes bound for Baghdad, where the Bush administration hoped it would provide a quick financial infusion for Iraq’s new government and the country’s battered economy.
Over the next year and a half, $12 billion to $14 billion was sent to Iraq in the airlift, and an additional $5 billion was sent by electronic transfer. It was unclear where the billions of dollars were going, however.
Stuart Bowen, an American lawyer, was appointed by then-president George W Bush, who he had previously worked with, to track down the missing money. Much of the money was probably used by the Iraqi government in some way, Bowen concluded.
But for years Bowen says he struggled to account for billions more until his investigators finally had a breakthrough, discovering that $1.2 billion to $1.6 billion had been stolen and moved to a bunker in rural Lebanon for safe keeping.
“I don’t know how the money got to Lebanon,” Bowen said. “If I knew that, we would have made more progress on the case.”
Bowen kept the discovery secret until neither he nor his investigators were in any way able to fully account for the missing money. He then announced the findings to the public.
“Billions of dollars have been taken out of Iraq over the last 10 years illegally,” he said. “In this investigation, we thought we were on the track for some of that lost money. It’s disappointing to me personally that we were unable to close this case, for reasons beyond our control.”
He is equally frustrated that the Bush administration, apart from his office, never investigated reports that huge amounts of money had disappeared, and that after his investigators found out about the bunker, the Obama administration did not pursue that lead, either.
Bowen said his investigators briefed the CIA and the FBI on what they found. But Bowen added that he believed one reason American officials had not gone after it was “because it was Iraqi money stolen by Iraqis.”
Spokesmen for the FBI and CIA declined to comment.