Ahmed Chalabi

Ahmed Chalabi (1945-) was born in Iraq to a Shi'ite banking family. He left in 1956, and has largely lived in the West, but has played an important part in influencing policy against Saddam Hussein and in establishing a post-Saddam goverment. His loyalties have not been clear, and, while he was once a potential head of an Iraqi government, is now isolated and

A Shia Muslim born in 1945 to a wealthy banking family, his father, Abdul Haydi Chalabi, was a member of the council of ministers of King Faisal II and then being President of the Senate, his family left Iraq in 1956 when Saddam took power. After secondary schooling in Britain, he did undergraduate studies in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and earned a doctorate at the University of Chicago.

Work and issues in finance
He taught mathematics at the American University of Beirut until 1977, when he founded the Petra Bank in Jordan in 1978. According to his daughter Tamara, he challenged the means by which Iraq was financing purchases for the Iran-Iraq War via the Italian Banca Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) and U.S. loan guarantees. She said that in 1989, when Petra submitted its financial statements to Jordanian regulators, pro-Saddam officials charged Chalabi with diverting assets, at a time when the Jordanian currency fell due to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. The Jordanian military seized the bank in April 1989, and Chalabi fled to Syria. She said it used Arthur Andersen's auditing to " that rewrote the financial condition of Petra Bank to make it appear insolvent on the date it was seized. Assets of 476 million Jordanian dinars ($541 million) were "revalued" downward to 297 million dinars ($337 million). Later, the bank's liquidators reported a collection rate of over 150% on the bulk of the devalued assets--a recovery rate that in itself shows the revaluation was a ruse." Details of the accusations have not been available. The Guardian (U.K), however, reported in 2003 Guardian reporters, however, said the audit report showed assets had been overstated, and there were underreported bad debts: "unsupported foreign currency balances at counter-party banks" (about $20m); and money purportedly due to the bank which could not be found (about $60m). Many of the bank's bad loans were to Chalabi-linked companies. His Swiss and Lebanese firms, Mebco and Socofi, were subsequently liquidated."

Chalabi was sentenced, in absentia, to 22 years imprisonment by a Jordanian court.

Kurdish resistance
except for a period in the mid-1990's when he tried to organise an uprising in the Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.

9-11
Chalabi pressed the U.S. to overthrow Saddam even more strongly after the 9-11 attack. On September 19, 2001, the Defense Advisory Board, chaired by Richard Perle, met for two days. Iraq was the focus. Among the speakers was Ahmed Chalabi, a controversial Iraqi exile who argued for an approach similar to the not-yet-executed approach to Afghanistan: U.S. air and other support to insurgent Iraqis.

Preparation for Iraq War
The Iraqi Freedom Force was a guerilla force, recruited by Ahmed Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, recruited to fight in the Iraq War; United States Central Command officers did not trust or want the force

On 19 May 2004, The U.S. announced that effective in July 2004 Chalabi's INC would no longer receive its $335,000 monthly allowance. In dawn raids the next morning, Iraqi police and American troops surrounded Chalabi's headquarters and home in Baghdad, arrested two of his aides, and searched the premises.

US officials now suspected something that apparently never occurred to them before the war: that Chalabi, who isn't an American, was not entirely loyal to the American side. Insiders say he was illicitly funneling information on American plans to the Iranian government, while helping the US form its Iraq policy and plan its Iraq war.