American and Iraqi government investigators tracing hundreds of millions of pounds missing from Saddam Hussein's illicit fortune are hoping to question members of the former dictator's close family...
-View Frontline's interactive: Saddam's Family Tree
Officials from the FBI, the American Treasury and the State Department particularly want to find £2.2bn in illegal profits that Saddam's regime is alleged to have earned from 2000-2003 from an oil-for-trade pact signed with Syria that was outside the official United Nations administered oil-for-food program, according to official documents released to a US congressional sub-committee...The U. N, who imposed economic sanctions, including a ban on oil sales, on Iraq in 1990 after Saddam invaded Kuwait...And the oil-for-food program was launched in December 1996 to ease the impact of the sanctions on ordinary Iraqis (who under 15-nation UN Sec. Council supervision) authorized the government to sell oil and use the proceeds to buy civilian goods...
In a report submitted to the CIA last year Charles Duelfer, a former UN arms inspectors, estimated that Saddam had amassed $10.9bn 'through illicit means' between 1990, when sanctions were imposed, and 2003. The dictator is also believed to have hidden cash in accounts in Switzerland, Japan, Germany and other countries and to have invested in precious stones, possibly diamonds purchased in the Far East.-Back in May 6, 2003 it was reported:
Most Europeans favored hanging Hussein
..or um..Hero?
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