quante valigie occorrono per un miliardo di $ ? - gz
¶
By: GZ on Mercoledì 07 Maggio 2003 00:09
Ecco spiegato perchè il dollaro cola a picco in questi giorni.
Riportano oggi (vedi sotto) che il figlio di Saddam, Qusai, ha portato via un miliardo di dollari IN CONTANTI (1.800 miliardi di vecchie lire) dalla banca centrale irakena al momento della fuga, in pratica tutto il denaro contante che c'era.
(quante valigie occorrono per un miliardo di dollari in contanti ? Il taglio più grosso è da 100 dollaro per cui ha portato via 10 milioni di biglietti...)
Evidentemente una volta all'estero per vendicarsi ha cambiato questo miliardo di dollari in euro e zac! ha fatto crollare il dollaro.
Ora gli stanno dando la caccia. Se lo trovano gli americani torneranno a cambiarli in dollari e il dollaro riprende.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Iraq Central Bank Dispensed
Some $900 Million in March
WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- Roughly $900 million in U.S. currency was taken from Iraq's central bank shortly before the U.S. began bombing Baghdad in March, U.S. government officials confirmed Tuesday.
Separately, President Bush named L. Paul Bremer, a former ambassador and head of the State Department's counterterrorism office, to be his special envoy to Iraq and oversee its transition to democratic rule.
And, in France, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft told an Interpol meeting that organized criminal groups were involved in the looting of Iraq's national museum and the U.S. will fully back international efforts to retrieve the stolen artifacts.
Treasury Department officials said they didn't know where the money from the Iraqi central bank was taken and were still checking out details of the incident, including the denomination of the missing U.S. currency.
The New York Times reported Tuesday that Mr. Hussein ordered the money be taken from the central bank and sent his son Qusay to grab the cash in the middle of the night.
The amount of money -- $900 million in U.S. $100 bills and $100 million in euros -- was so large it had to be taken from the bank in three tractor trailers, the New York Times reported. U.S. Treasury officials couldn't confirm the information on the euros taken from the central bank.
Qusay, Mr. Hussein's younger son, and Abid al-Hamid Mahmood, the Iraqi leader's personal assistant, organized the removal of the cash, the Times report said, quoting an unnamed Iraqi banking official.
The Iraqi official said the funds removal took place at 4 a.m. on March 18. U.S. Treasury official George Mullinax, who is assigned to help rebuild Iraq's banking system, told the Times that about the $900 million was taken by "Saddam Hussein's people."
Bremer Named at White House
Mr. Bush's appointee, Mr. Bremer, will become the civilian administrator, heading the transition team that includes retired Army Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, currently the top-ranking U.S. civilian in Iraq. Mr. Bremer will oversee all political and reconstruction efforts.
Mr. Bush announced the appointment, which had been expected, during a White House meeting Tuesday with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. He said he was "sending one of our best citizens" and called Mr. Bremer "a man with enormous experience -- a can-do type of person."
The president said he has "full confidence" in Mr. Bremer, who was present when Mr. Bush made the announcement in the Oval Office.
Mr. Bremer, 61 years old, was a former assistant to former Secretaries of State William P. Rogers and Henry Kissinger. He was ambassador-at-large for counterrorism from 1986 to 1989, and also has served as U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands.
He later worked for a consulting firm headed by Mr. Kissinger and currently serves as chairman and chief executive of the Marsh Crisis Consulting company. In his new assignment, he will be senior to Gen. Garner, a retired Army general, representing a military-to-civilian handoff.
Organized Thieves
Mr. Ashcroft spoke in southeastern France at a conference of art experts and law enforcement officials aimed at creating a database listing museum contents looted in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
"From the evidence that has emerged, there is a strong case to be made that the looting and theft of the artifacts were perpetrated by organized criminal groups -- criminals who knew precisely what they were looking for," Mr. Ashcroft said.
Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of coalition forces in Iraq, has said the opposite -- that the Baghdad looting didn't appear to be carried out by organized thieves
Interpol Secretary-General Ronald Noble said one of the group's top tasks was to collect and distribute descriptions of missing objects so they can be tracked down. He said such information was still sorely lacking. "Right now, we are operating only on rumors and anecdotal evidence," Mr. Noble said, adding that after the 1991 Gulf War, Interpol was able to log only one looted item into its database.
Ancient Mesopotamia -- modern-day Iraq -- was the cradle of urban civilization. Iraq's museums held millennia-old artworks from the Assyrian, Sumerian and Babylonian cultures. But some experts fear thousands of these pieces may be missing.
Figuring out exactly what has been taken depends in large part on the condition of written inventories from the looted museum. While the catalog at Baghdad's National Museum has been kept for the most part intact, the status of inventories at museums in other parts of Iraq is unknown. And experts say they have no idea of the looting toll at archaeological sites.
U.N. Inspections on Hold
United Nations inspections in Iraq, meanwhile, are indefinitely on hold after a U.S. official at talks in Paris with French and British representatives said the Bush administration has no immediate plans to readmit the inspectors.
"We don't see any real need for Unmovic or IAEA inspectors to return to Iraq to search for weapons of mass destruction or to secure them," the U.S. official said, referring to the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency.
The official said he had no doubt Washington would be in contact with the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear inspection agency, about sites it had been monitoring in Iraq. But the official appeared to rule out a request made Monday by the agency for access to Iraq's main nuclear site suspected of being looted.
"I think we are there and it's our responsibility and it's why we fought the war, and I think we're capable of handling it," the official said in response to a question about the IAEA request.
Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the IAEA, sent a written request to U.S. officials last week, asking for access to Iraq's Tuwaitha nuclear research facility, a spokeswoman for the Vienna-based group said Monday. As of Monday, U.S. officials hadn't responded to Mr. ElBaradei's letter, she said.
Passport Controversy
The French Foreign Ministry denied a Washington Times report Tuesday that claimed the French government had helped Iraqi officials escape from Syria by issuing them with passports.
In a statement, French Foreign Ministry spokesman Francois Rivasseau said: "We have looked into this. The French authorities have given no visa to any officials of the former Iraqi regime since the beginning of the Iraq war, either in Syria or anywhere else. We formally reject this kind of allegation, which is contrary to the truth and inspired by ill will. We consider that these rumors [are] totally unfounded and a discredit to those who spread them. It's time this ended."
The Washington Times said in its report that the French government had secretly helped fleeing Iraqi officials. The newspaper cited U.S. intelligence officials as saying an unknown number of Iraqis who worked for Mr. Hussein's government were given passports by French officials in Syria.
The passports are regarded as documents of the European Union, because of France's membership in the union. French passports allow holders to move freely among 12 EU countries that are part of the Schengen agreement on unrestricted travel. Britain, Denmark and Ireland aren't party to the Schengen pact.
The Bush administration also said it had no background on the report. "I have no information on that," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.
American forces freed 250 more Iraqi war prisoners Tuesday in southern Iraq, continuing to empty U.S.-run detention camps that once housed 7,000 men.
More than 5,000 POWs and civilian detainees have been released from Camp Bucca in the past two weeks after a military tribunal determined they posed no threat, said Sgt. Maj. Ambrose Michelino, a U.S. military policeman.
About 1,800 prisoners remain in the camp. Maj. Michelino said most of those will be freed in coming days, though he expected 400 to 900 "hard-core" prisoners would be held for questioning.