CBS News
Oct. 19, 2006 -- More than half a billion dollars earmarked to fight the insurgency in Iraq was stolen by people the United States had entrusted to run the country's Ministry of Defense before the 2005 elections, according to Iraqi investigators.
Iraq's former minister of finance says coalition members like the United States and Britain are doing little to help recover the money or catch suspects, most of whom fled the country. The CBS 60 Minutes investigation also turned up audio recordings of a suspect who seems to be discussing the transfer of $45 million to the account of a top political adviser to the interim defense minister.
CBS correspondent Steve Kroft reports on this mother of all heists this Sunday, Oct. 22, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
"We have not been given any serious, official support from either the United States or the U.K. or any of the surrounding Arab countries," says Ali Allawi, who was confronted with the missing funds when he took over as Iraq's finance minister last year.
He thinks he knows why Iraqi investigators have gotten little help. "The only explanation I can come up with is that too many people in positions of power and authority in the new Iraq have been, in one way or another, found with their hands inside the cookie jar," says Allawi, who left his post when a new Iraqi government was formed earlier this year. "And if they are brought to trial, it will cast a very disparaging light on those people who had supported them and brought them to this position of power and authority," he tells Kroft.
http://keyetv.com/topstories/topstories_story_293013619.html
