Imagine if billions of dollars were sitting in a bank account...
...and that bank account was in one of the most dysfunctional countries in the world
Sooner or later, someone would want to steal them
And sooner or later, someone did
This kind of high level financial corruption
This is the story of the biggest bank heist in history
For months, The Economist ’s Middle East correspondent Nicolas Pelham...
...has been following the trail to figure out how the cash was stolen...
It was done without sawn-off shotguns, without balaclavas...
...this was the ultimate inside job
...and who did it?
This is a very serious crime, by very powerful people
In August 2022, this man, Hussein Kanber agha...
...received a phone call which would change his life
...from the finance minister of Iraq
He said that he was hearing rumours...
...that about 800bn Iraqi dinars were stolen from the tax authority
800bn Iraqi dinars, is what, it’s about, sort of 600...
...$600m
Hussein Kanber fled Iraq in 1992...
...after Saddam Hussein’s thugs detained him at a checkpoint
He moved to Sweden...
But he continued to have dealings in Iraq...
...and knew the finance minister
He said, I think you should come to Baghdad...
...and support us in this investigation
I felt it had to be done
Kanber suggested a team was discreetly formed, made up of accountants and lawyers
Together, they set to work
The first day we met, we briefed the committee what we want to do...
...to figure out what’s going on
I mean, you have the bank statement that’s a quite heavy, thick document
You just see the opening balance and the closing balance...
...and then you see that there are 3.7-something trillion Iraqi dinars missing
$2.5bn
Exactly
The people around the table, they were, like shocked
The missing billions came from an account...
...which contained unclaimed rebates
Companies working in Iraq have to pay tax in advance when they receive a contract...
...which is kept in this specific account
If companies make less profit than they expected...
...they can claim a rebate
But in practice...
...there is so much bureaucracy, this doesn’t always happen
So for years this money had just sat there alluringly
Kanber and the team started to make calls
During that period...
...it’s really like watching one of these sick Tarantino movies...
...and you don’t want to see...
...but you keep watching, because you want to see what’s the end of it
So this was one of the cheques...
...one of the perpetrators, they took the cheque, they took it to Rafidain Bank
What Rafidain Bank does in that case, they write a letter to the tax authority...
...to make sure that the cheque is authentic
It was. And it wasn’t the only one
Kanber and the team dug deeper and found that...
...247 cheques had been written in the space of a single year
All to just five companies
No one had heard of these companies before
Three of them had been registered just before the transfers began
It seemed three businessmen were beneficiaries of the money...
...in the tax authority’s account
But there was one in particular that people would soon be talking about...
Nur Zuheir
Nur Zuheir himself, is a rather unassuming character...
...he’s in his early 40s, he’s kind of, quite chubby
He has this remarkable knack of winning people over and doing it...
...with the suggestion of perhaps they take a watch...
...perhaps they then take money, of sort of easing people into a system of corruption
But just in the sheer complexity of the heist, it became clear...
...that this wasn’t the work of one man
So I decided to go around Baghdad to find out more
I’m standing outside the General Commission for Taxes
It was from here that authorisation came for Nur Zuheir...
...and his accomplices to receive $2.5bn
It was surprisingly easy to get into the tax authority
I was ushered into one office on the fifth floor...
...and I kept asking about how could this heist have happened?
As I was leaving, one man took me aside and said, you know...
...you just walked through the same entrance that Nur Zuheir came in
He described how his limousine would park at the steps of the tax authority...
...how he would leave his security escort on the ground floor...
...and how he would just sort of march into any room that he wanted
He would make the request for a repayment...
...supposedly on behalf of one of the companies...
...but in practice fictitiously
To issue large cheques from the tax authority...
...you needed the signatures of at least 12 different officials...
...a process which could take weeks
But Nur Zuheir managed to get the cheques much quicker
In the background, you’ll see that building with the red façade...
...that’s the Rafidain Bank...
...and that was really the nucleus of the heist of the century...
...it was from here that the dinars came from the tax authority...
...and were transferred to the Rafidain Bank, and from there onto the beneficiaries
Iraq’s bureaucracy is just really plodding. It’s still a cash economy
It hasn’t been digitalised...
...and in comes Nur Zuheir...
...and he decides that he’s going to turn it into a model of efficiency
He gets everybody sort of rushing to turn around cheques in 24 hours
He gets money into the system and out of the system within the same period of time
He has, kind of, everybody at his beck-and-call...
...partly because he’s paid them off, partly because they’re terrified of him
But making off with $2.5bn in cash...
...was something of a logistical challenge
The highest value banknote in Iraq was the 50,000 dinar bill...
...which was worth about $35
If all the stolen notes had been stacked on top of each other...
...the pile would have risen higher than Mount Kilimanjaro
Security vans would turn up at the backs of the banks...
...take the money, then be driven off...
...to different safe houses and different zones in Baghdad
A lot of the money...
...would then be transferred out of the country from Baghdad airport...
...to different regional capitals
Money fanned out across Iraq...
...and then across the region, and perhaps even farther afield
As Hussein Kanber started to piece together the story...
...something didn’t add up
You have $2.5bn withdrawn in cash, so there must be somebody that counted it
There must be somebody that, you know, lifted it from the vaults of the bank to the cars
There must be guards around the bank
There’s like an army of people that had to process these payments
I mean, here you have cars full of cash in Iraq
I mean, you’ve been in Baghdad
There’s a checkpoint every street, right?
Why did no one report it? Why did they accept it?
I’m Jonathan Beckman, the editor of 1843 magazine
The Economist ’s home of narrative journalism...
...and the human stories behind the headlines
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Iraq looks like a functioning democracy
It has elections and an active parliament
But in reality, nothing in the country works as it should and corruption is rife
There’re different forms of corruption, right?
So, obviously you have petty corruption doing everyday tasks
Bribes often help make things easier...
...but what I think is more significant is that grand corruption, that political corruption...
...which in essence is the political system
It stems back to some of the decisions made early on in 2003
You had these new leaders...
...who all of a sudden found themselves in positions of power...
...and they needed to keep that power...
...and corruption was an important mechanism to become powerful
They needed to get their hands on the incredible wealth of the state
And they needed to ensure that contracts and procurement...
...went towards their interests
When you look at the story of this heist of the century, as Iraqis are calling it...
...you really begin to see that how the system works
Power in Iraq is shared between competing religious, ethnic and political groups...
...many of whom faced each other in a bloody civil war
Different government ministries are controlled by different groups
Most fall into two main camps, those aligned with the West...
...and those aligned with Iran
At the time of the heist, the government in power was aligned with the West...
...and led by Prime Minister Mustafa Kadhimi
But his government’s power was crumbling
Waiting in the wings was the Iranian-backed Fatah alliance
Fatah controlled the tax office at the heart of the investigation
So being publicly associated with the bank heist might discredit it...
...and derail its efforts to take power
My impression at the outset was that this was the pro-American camp’s attempt...
...to try and embarrass the pro-Iran camp...
...and show that they were the kind of source of corruption
They were the source of the heist
That as so often in Iraq, an investigation into corruption...
...isn’t solely about trying to ensure good governance
It’s about trying to undermine your opponents
The struggling government ensured the report into the heist was rushed out
Two weeks later, Nur Zuheir was arrested as he tried to board a plane...
...but the efforts to undermine the pro-Iranian faction were to no avail
Within days, the Prime Minister Kadhimi had been toppled
The new pro-Iranian prime minister, Mohammed Sudani...
...was keen to demonstrate that his faction had nothing to hide
At a press conference, flanked by what he claimed was some of the stolen cash...
...Sudani vowed to recover the rest of the money
But the stacks of cash made up just a small fraction of the missing billions
At the same time, Nur Zuheir was abruptly released on bail
The explanation at the time by the judiciary and the government...
...was that his release would help secure the funds that he’d...
...squirreled away
But over time, it didn’t seem that he was going back into prison any time soon...
...so it became clear, quite quickly...
...that this was a man that had protection at the highest level
It made me want to know why
Nur Zuheir told The Economist that he...
Adding that he is...
When asked why Nur Zuheir had been released...
a spokeman for Sudani told The Economist ...
Nicolas contacted the judge overseeing the investigation...
Judge Dhia Jaafar Lafta...
...he’s been widely perceived to be aligned with the pro-Iranian faction
Although officials insist that Iraq’s judiciary is independent
Not long after, Zuheir’s release, the government changed course
The investigation seemed to shift dramatically...
...from those who were accused of perpetrating the heist...
...to those who had uncovered it
Officials issued arrest warrants...
...for some of the senior figures involved in exposing Zuheir
The implication was that this collusion went right to the top of the previous regime
Former prime minister Mustafa Kadhimi and some of his allies fled to London
Barely a day went by without one member or other of the camp contacting me
They wanted to go on camera...
...they wanted to talk to me, they wanted to defend themselves...
...but they also wanted to show that they weren’t involved...
...that there were others who were involved...
...and this was a story that they felt could actually turn the tables...
...in Iraq’s political future
You had direct responsibility for the airport
A lot of the money disappeared through the airport
At the very least, should you not bear some of the responsibility...
...for the disappearance?
The more people I talked to, the more allegations are being flung around
It became harder and harder to discern who was clean and who was complicit
Everyone seemed to have mud to fling at their political enemies
Throughout his investigation, Nicolas talked to Iraqi politicians...
...and officials from across the spectrum
He started to realise that underneath their furious opposition...
...they actually had a lot in common
They were part of the same Iraqi elite
They sent their kids to the same exclusive schools and mixed in similar circles
And at some point, it dawned on me that this wasn’t really a system of two camps
This was a system in which everybody was in on the make
It brought back memories of “ The Murder on the Orient Express” ...
...the story in which everybody who was on that train carriage...
...was complicit in the murder
And I thought somehow...
...this is also now happening again in Iraq, in which all the factions...
...which should have been protecting the country and serving...
...the country were actually involved in fleecing it
Tearing it apart
Many months on, from the news of the heist breaking...
...it was still unclear...
...how much of the stolen cash had been recovered and where the rest was
We’ve seen two-and-a-half billion dollars can leave government coffers
Where is that money gone?
I think what we’re seeing more and more is the money staying in Iraq...
...which means if you go to Baghdad today, you might see big developments
The question becomes, is this being redistributed across society...
...or is this part of wider money-laundering schemes?
But we know that there’s a lot of money in Iraq right now...
...a lot of money in Baghdad and other cities...
...being spent in infrastructure and these big sort of projects
The fact that it was harder to take all of that money out of the country...
...meant that at least some of it had to stay in Iraq
And it’s now a city which is on the move again
And at least some of that has got to be due to this heist of the century
It’s not clear if there will ever be serious consequences...
...for the key figures involved in the heist
Iraq’s elite continue to squabble
And the rest of the money is still nowhere to be seen
To read my investigation into the bank heist, please click on the link
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