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Wednesday, April 23, 2003

By David Zucchino, Los Angeles Times

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A team of Army civil affairs soldiers yesterday found $112 million in U.S. currency sealed inside seven animal kennels, bringing to $768 million the total in cash uncovered in recent days in a wooded neighborhood of mansions and rose gardens where top Baath Party and Republican Guard officials once lived.

Military officers said the money apparently was left by senior Iraqi officials who were fleeing the American invasion and were unable to carry all the cash they had amassed.

U.S. officials said investigators had discovered a withdrawal of $1 billion from the Central Bank of Jordan, leading to speculation that an additional $200 million or more is still hidden in this walled community just east of Saddam Hussein's Presidential Palace. The officials declined to say when the money was withdrawn in Jordan, or by whom.

But the locks on the kennels provided some tantalizing clues. They bore the signature of Republican Guard Lt. Gen. Muhammed Ibrahim and were dated March 20 -- the day the U.S. ground invasion of Iraq was launched.

Inside one of the 28 boxes that contained the cash was a slip of paper that read, in Arabic: "Contents 40,000 one-hundred-dollar bills. By order of Saddam Saddam, this currency is sealed on March 16 in the presence of the following five people." Below were the signatures of five Baath Party ministers.

The cash, like the $656 million uncovered Friday in four barricaded cottages, was stacked neatly inside galvanized aluminum boxes sealed with blue strapping tape and green seals stamped "Bank of Jordan."

Tape found on the door locks of the cottages also bore the date March 20 and the signature of Gen. Ibrahim. Inside one of the boxes was an accounting slip signed by Iraqi government officials and verifying that $4 million was secured in the box on Feb. 5, 2002.

The Secret Service said it was working with the military to determine whether any of the cash discovered was counterfeited. U.S. officials have said all of the money would be held for the transitional Iraqi government now being formed.

Some officers have speculated that the currency was payment by Jordan for Iraqi oil purchased in violation of economic sanctions put on Iraq by the United Nations nearly 13 years ago, after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. In late March, the Central Bank of Jordan said it took steps to curb withdrawals from Iraqi private or state deposits held in Jordanian banks. The governor of Jordan's Central Bank was reported by Reuters as saying the move was prompted by a number of suspicious transactions.

ArmyCriminal Investigation Division investigators yesterday were also questioning six U.S. soldiers about an undisclosed amount of missing cash.

The six soldiers, all from the Third Infantry Division, included four already under investigation for $900,000 stolen and recovered Friday from the cash retrieved from the cottages. Of that amount, $600,000 was found hidden in a tree and $300,000 inside a cooler on one of the trucks used to transport the $656 million to Baghdad's international airport Friday night.

Yesterday, more stacks of $100 bills from the horde of cash found four days earlier were recovered in the same neighborhood by investigators.

The suspects, members of the division's Fourth Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment, who were either assigned to guard cash Friday or load it onto trucks, were read their rights but have not been charged pending further investigation. They face penalties ranging from loss of rank and pay to prison time in military jails, officers said.