One to Two Billion Dollars Missing at Iraqi Ministry of Defense.
Just think of it as prequel to the Hurricane Katrina reconstruction. After all, it’s being run under the supervision of the same people.
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by Michael Froomkin
Laurie Silvers & Mitchell Rubenstein Distinguished Professor of Law
University of Miami School of Law
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The good people in the Iraqi National Assembly are going to supervise the Katrina reconstruction effort?
That’s very generous of them to offer, but I think it might be more appropriate for US officials to handle the task. Besides, the Iraqi people have more urgent things to worry about in these difficult days.
The people, not very good, in the US administration/occupation/advisory/whateveritis call the shots when it comes to the big money.
Part of this looks like internal Iraqi politics. According to the story, Shaalan stole the entire defense budget while simultaneously spending most of that same defense budget on products that were delivered but were defective, obsolete, or overpriced. That seems to be logically impossible. And if US personnel were assisted him or were even primarily responsible as claimed by some of the article’s sources, why would they work to get the money spent wastefully on non-US products and why would they facilitate getting money out of the country to someone who was no longer in a position to give the US anything? Then there’s the fact that the Finance Minister (who you’d suppose would be the primary person in charge of preventing such theft) claims that a similar amount is missing from other government ministries but the only person he directly accuses is Shaalan, who’s conveniently out of government and out of reach in Jordan.