Iraqi Central: Washington pledged to protect our money deposited abroad
The Central Bank of Iraq said, on Tuesday, that the legal authorities in the United States pledged to continue to protect the Iraqi funds deposited in its banks and the banks of other countries, in conjunction with the near completion of the country’s payment of all debts incurred before 2003.
The Central Bank added, in a statement, according to the agency. Anatolia said, “The American legal authorities assured the bank that all its reserves and funds are fortified, and no party can seize them, and that they will defend its immunity with the rest of the countries.”
In 1991, a UN Compensation Committee was formed, obligating Baghdad to pay $52.4 billion in compensation to individuals, companies, governmental organizations and others, who incurred losses resulting directly from the invasion and occupation of Kuwait.
Meanwhile, Baghdad recently announced that it is determined to repay the debts owed to it before 2003.
Debts owed to Iraq before the 2003 war, to countries such as Kuwait and the Paris Club, in addition to bilateral debts with countries and companies, which have not been paid and their interests have accumulated until today.
Foreign companies had submitted complaints to collect financial compensation estimated at millions of dollars for the disruption of their activities in the country or debts owed to them by the government at the time, according to Iraqi officials, dating back to the period before 2003.
But the Iraqi authorities say that these compensations have no legal basis, and they have not been decided upon. . Iraq has so far paid about $50 billion, according to the United Nations, and the decision requires Iraq to deposit 5 percent of its export earnings from sales of oil, oil and gas products, in a UN fund established under the name of the United Nations Compensation Fund.
And government officials had revealed earlier, that the internal and external debts owed by Iraq amount to about 73 billion dollars, payable, in addition to 40 billion outstanding for eight countries.
And the financial advisor to the Iraqi Prime Minister, Mazhar Muhammad Salih, revealed in previous statements that “Iraq’s internal debt is about 50 billion dollars.”
Last June, the Iraqi Ministry of Justice revealed that it had taken accelerated steps to recover the country’s frozen funds abroad that date back to the era of the late President Saddam Hussein (1979-2003).
Iraq’s funds abroad were frozen after the United Nations imposed stifling economic sanctions on Baghdad, as a result of its invasion of Kuwait in the early 1990s.
Iraq is going through a stifling financial crisis resulting from the drop in global oil prices, since the beginning of the global outbreak of the Corona epidemic, and the spread of corruption, as the Iraqi authorities estimate that 150 billion dollars have been smuggled from corruption deals abroad since 2003, according to what the Iraqi President Barham Salih announced on May 23 / last May.