For years the backdrop to the Chalabi question <$NoAd$> was his 1992 conviction in absentia on charges of embezzlement in Jordan. To his American critics this was the crux of who Chalabi was: a crook. To his American partisans it was a political conviction, a slur, a price Chalabi had paid for earlier opposition to Saddam. (The Jordanians had, so the story went, turned on Chalabi at Saddam’s behest.)
Now read this: a few grafs at the end of Post’s piece on the Chalabi raid …
For several months, U.S. officials have been investigating people affiliated with the INC for possible ties to a scheme to defraud the Iraqi government during the transition to a new currency that took place from Oct. 15 last year to Jan. 15, according to a U.S. occupation authority official familiar with the case. The official said the raids were partly related to that investigation.
At the center of the inquiry is Nouri, whom Chalabi picked as the top anti-corruption official in the new Iraqi Finance Ministry. Chalabi heads the Governing Council’s finance committee, and has major influence in its staffing and operation.
When auditors early this year began counting the old Iraqi dinars brought in and the new Iraqi dinars given out in return, they discovered a shortfall of more than $22 million. Nouri, a German national, was arrested in April and faces 17 charges including extortion, fraud, embezzlement, theft of government property and abuse of authority. He is being held in a maximum security facility, according to three sources close to the investigation.
Speaks for itself.
