Follow the Money (my edit: why hasn't the Fed traced US$ found in Iraq?)

Follow the Money

The New York Times, January 14, 2004

Martin Mayer, Guest Scholar, Economic Studies

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But there is another line of questioning officials might pursue—one that depends less on the cooperation of Mr. Hussein than on the assistance of the United States Federal Reserve Bank. Among Mr. Hussein's possessions when he was captured was three-quarters of a million dollars in United States currency in crisp new bills. Whence came the gentleman's stash?

Answering this question would help our understanding of terrorist financial networks. And if the cash is sequentially numbered, as is likely, then the question could be easily answered.

All United States currency is printed by the United States Mint, to the order of one of the 12 banks of the Federal Reserve system. It comes into circulation through a bank that has an account at the Fed for which it was printed. The Fed deducts the face value of the bills from that account, and an armored car takes them to their new owner.

That regional Federal Reserve Bank keeps a record that identifies the purchasing bank. And the purchaser knows how it disposed of the bills. When they are found all together, it means that the bank that bought the bills did not feed them out from the teller window or the cash machine, but delivered them to a single customer.

And the bank knows who that customer was. Between, say, Philadelphia and Iraq, there is no doubt a chain, perhaps involving banks in the Cayman or Channel Islands, in Abu Dhabi or Dubai. Still, each bank in the chain can give the name of the customer to which it gave these bills.

Although Saddam Hussein's government had many sanctions against it, it may well be that no laws were broken in the passage of the Federal Reserve notes from the mint to Tikrit. But it would be interesting to know which banks were collaborators in getting that cash to the tyrant of Iraq.


~snip~

http://www.brook.edu/views/op-ed/mayer/20040114.htm

to know the answer. follow the money and it leads back to the guys who run the us government....

Just how does the most evil man in the world get his hands on $750K of brand new currency?

Of course, that's not part of the script, so we will never know the answer to this question.

I'd reda about it a while back, but never put 2 + 2 = corruption at the highest levels.

The more I hang around this place, the more I realize we're the bad guys in the world - at least the people running the show.

...who invested money in UA and AMR put options in the week prior to 911. Still no published data on this.

I don't find it unusual that a dictator would have millions in fresh dollars. How many dollars did the shah or marcos have in personal accounts or just stashed around the bedroom?

One of the reasons for bank secrecy is that the international financial system is dependent upon the unfettered flow of huge amounts of cash regardless of whether it comes from the one trillion dollar a year market in illegal drugs or the similarly large market in illegal arms trafficking. For example, it has been reported that the entire Mexican financial system is dominated by illegal drug money. The intelligence agencies of many countries in the great game requires the ability to rely on corrupt banks to route cash to where it needs to go to get the dirty work done. Investigations have been done that have shown major American banks to have been involved in proven cases of money laundering to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. Ho hum......does anybody care?

There are always large illegal monetary transfers taking place. If the money were traceable, US intelligence agencies and their corporate minions would be restricted to their miserable thirty billion dollar a year budget. Hundreds of billions of dollars simply disappeared from American S&Ls and other banks during the 80s. It was an intelligence operation, ostensibly to fund secret wars in latin America prohibited by Congress. Very little of this money was ever recovered. Only a fraction of it went to illegal Iran-contra ops. Where did the rest go? I mean other than secret numbered accounts for chosen members of the BFEE.

Foreign policy often requires the transfer of huge funds to obtain "allies" or mobilize warlords. If these funds were traceable, the illegal and illusory nature of so many foreign policy objectives and policies would become readily apparent.