part #1 SADDAM funds to syria 11/19/2004
Syrian bank funded insurgency with Saddam's millions
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Friday, November 19, 2004
The United States has concluded that Syria helped finance the Sunni insurgency in Iraq.
Officials said the regime of President Bashar Assad used the state-owned Commercial Bank of Syria to relay hundreds of millions of dollars to Saddam Hussein loyalists in Iraq. They said the money has been deployed to finance the insurgency against the U.S.-led coalition primarily in Iraq's Sunni Triangle.
The Commercial Bank of Syria held more than $1 billion in Saddam regime accounts on the eve of the U.S.-led war in Iraq in March 2003, officials said. Most of that money stemmed from Iraqi arms and oil smuggling as well as illegal commissions obtained from Iraqi oil sales overseen by the United Nations.