The biggest bank heist in history (and why you've never heard of it)

imagine if billions of dollars were sitting in a bank account and that bank account was in one of the most dysfunctional countries in the world sooner or later someone would want to steal them and sooner or later someone did this kind of high-level Financial Corruptions this is the story of the biggest bank heist in history for months The Economist Middle East correspondent Nicholas Pelham has been following the trail to figure out how the cache was stolen it was done without sawing off shotguns without balaclava this was the ultimate Inside Job this is a very serious crime by very powerful people in August 2022 this man Hussein kanbar alcohol received a phone call which would change his life from the Finance Minister of Iraq he said that he was hearing rumors there are about 800 billion Iraqi dinars were stolen from the tax Authority 800 billion Iraqi dinars is what it's about sort of 600 600 million dollars Hussein kanbar fled Iraq in 1992 after Saddam Hussein's thugs detained him at a checkpoint he moved to Sweden but he continued to have dealings in Iraq and knew the Finance Minister he said I think you should come to Baghdad and support us in this investigation I felt thought to be done bar suggested Hamptons and lawyer lawyer together they set to work the first day we met we briefed the committee what we want to do to figure out what's going on I mean you have the bank statement it's quite heavy thick document you just see the opening balance and the closing balance and then you see that there are 3.7 something trillion Iraqi dinars missing 2.5 billion dollars exactly the people around the table they were like shocked the missing bills came from an account tamed unclaimed rebate Reba companies were have to pay tax in advance when they receive a contract which is kept in this specific account if companies make less profit than they expected they can claim a rebate but in practice there is so much bureaucracy this doesn't always happen so for years this money had just sat there alluringly kanbar and the team started to make calls during that period it's really like watching one of these sick Tarantino movies and you don't want to see but you keep watching because you want to see what's the end of it so this was one of the checks one of the perpetrators they took the check to our affidane bank does in that case they write a letter to their tax authority to make sure that the check is authentic it was and it wasn't the only one kanbar and the team dug deeper and found that 247 checks have been written in the space of a single year all to just five companies [Music] no one had heard of these companies before three of them have been registered just before the transfers began it seemed three businessmen were beneficiaries of the money in the tax Authority's account but there was one in particular that people would soon be talking about nor is the hair nor the hair himself is a kind of rather unassuming character he's in his early 40s he's kind of quite chubby he has this remarkable Knack of winning people over and doing it with the suggestion of perhaps they take a watch perhaps and then take money of sort of easing people into a system of corruption but just in the sheer complexity of the heist it became clear that this wasn't the work of one man so I decided to go around Baghdad to find out more [Music] I'm standing outside the general commission for taxes it was from here that authorization came for nose O'Hare and his accomplices to receive 2.5 billion dollars surprisingly easy to get into the tax Authority I was rushed into one office on the fifth floor and I kept asking about how could this High stuff happened as I was leaving kind of one man took me aside and said you know you just walked through the same entrance that North hair came in he described how uh his limousine would park at the steps of the tax Authority how he would leave his security escort on the ground floor and how he just sort of marched into any room that he wanted he would make the request for a repayment supposedly on behalf of one of the companies but in practice fictitiously [Music] large checks checks for tax Authority you needed the signatures of at least 12 different officials a process which could take weeks but nor is a hair managed to get the checks much quicker [Music] in the background you'll see that building with the red facade that's the Rapidan bank and that was really the nucleus of the heist of the century it was from here that the DNR came from the tax Authority and were transferred to the Rapidan bank and from there on to the beneficiaries Iraq's bureaucracy is just really flooding it it's still a cash economy it hasn't been digitalized an income's nozzle here and he decides that he's going to turn it into a model of efficiency he gets everybody sort of rushing to turn around checks in 24 hours he gets money into the system and out of the system within the same period of time he has kind of everybody who had his beck and call partly because he's paid them off partly because they're terrified of him but making off with 2.5 billion dollars in cash was something of a logistical challenge the highest value banknote in Iraq was the 50 000 dinar bill which was worth about 35 if all the stolen notes had been stacked on top of each other the pile would have risen higher than Mount Kilimanjaro security Vans would turn up at the backs of the banks take the money then be driven off to different safe houses and different zones in Baghdad a lot of the money would then be transferred out of the country from Baghdad airport to different Regional capitals money fanned out across Iraq and then across the region and perhaps even further afield as Hussein kanbar started to piece together the story something didn't add up you have 2.5 billion dollars withdrawn in cash so there must be somebody that counted it there must be somebody that's you know lifted it from their vaults of the band to the cars there must be guards around the bank there's like an army of people that had to process these payments I mean here you have Cars full of cash in Iraq I mean you've been in Baghdad there's checkpoint every I don't know in every street right why did no one report it why did they accept it I'm Jonathan Beckman the editor of 1843 magazine the economist's home of narrative journalism and the human stories behind the headlines if you're enjoying this film why not take out a subscription to The Economist there you can read more 1843 features like our profile of the CEO of BlackRock Larry Fink on our extensive coverage of the war in Ukraine for the best offer click on the link Iraq looks like a functioning democracy it has elections and an active Parliament but in reality nothing in the country works as it should and Corruption is Rife there's different forms of corruption right so obviously you have Petty corruption doing everyday tasks bribes often help make things easier but what's I think more significant is that grand corruption that political corruption which in essence is the political system it stems back to some of the decisions made early on in 2003 you had these new leaders who all of a sudden found themselves in positions of power and they needed to keep that power and Corruption was an important mechanism to become powerful they needed to get their hands on the incredible wealth of the state and they needed to ensure that contracts and procurement went towards their interests when you look at the story of this Heist of the century as Iraqis are calling it you really begin to see that that how the system works power in Iraq is shared between competing religious ethnic and political groups many of whom faced each other in a bloody Civil War different government Ministries are controlled by different groups most fall into two main camps those aligned with the west and those aligned with Iran at the time of the heist the government in power was aligned with the west and led by prime minister Mustafa Academy but his government's power was crumbling waiting in the wings was the iranian-backed fatah alliance Vata controlled the tax office at the heart of the investigation so being publicly associated with the bank heist might discredited and derail its efforts to take power my impression at the outset was that this was the pro-american campus attempt to try and embarrass the pro-iran camp and show that they were the kind of source of corruption they were the source of the heist that as so often in Iraq an investigation into corruption isn't solely about trying to ensure good governance it's about trying to undermine your opponents the struggling government ensured the reporting to the heist was rushed out was arrested as he tried to board a plane but the efforts to undermine the pro-iranian faction were to no avail within days prime minister kadmi had been toppled the new pro-iranian prime minister Muhammad Sudani was Keen to demonstrate that his faction had nothing to hide at a press conference flanked by what he claimed was some of the stolen cash Sudani vowed to recover the rest of the money [Music] but the stacks of cash made up just a small fraction of the missing billions at the same time nurse a hair was abruptly released on bail explanation at the time by the Judiciary in the government was that his release would help secure the funds that he squirreled away but over time you know it didn't seem that he was going back into prison anytime soon so it became clear quite quickly that this was a man that had protection at the highest level it may want to know why nor zahair told the economist that he vehemently denied the allegations mentioned therein [Music] I am a law-abiding citizen who never indulged in such type of crime when asked why nurse hair had been released a spokesman for Sudani told the economist the release of the accused nurse are here on bail was not a government decision but it is the decision of the judge and the charges were not dropped against him or those involved in this case he's been widely perceived to be aligned with the pro-iranian faction although officials insist that Iraq's Judiciary is independent um foreign [Music] not long after the hair's release the government changed course the investigation seemed to shift dramatically from those who were accused of perpetrating The Heist to those who are uncovered it for some of the scene involved in exposing the hair was born foreign the implication was that this collusion went right to the top of the previous regime former prime minister Mustafa Academy and some of his allies fled to London barely a day went by without one member or other of the camp contacting me they wanted to go on camera they wanted to talk to me they wanted to defend themselves but they also wanted to show that they weren't involved that there were others who were involved and this was a story that they felt could actually turn the tables in Iraq's political future one two three thank you foreign you had Direct responsibility for the for the airport a lot of the money disappeared through the airport at the very least you do not bear some of the responsibility for The Disappearance of this is foreign the more people I talk to the more allegations are being flung around it became harder and harder to discern who was clean and who was complicit everyone seemed to have mud to fling it their political enemies throughout his investigation Nicholas talked to Iraqi politicians and officials from across the Spectrum he started to realize that underneath their Furious opposition they actually had a lot in common they were part of the same Iraqi Elite they sent their kids to the same exclusive schools and mixed in similar circles at some point it dawned on me that this wasn't really a system of two camps this was a system in which everybody was in on the make it brought back memories of the murder on the Orient Express a story in which you know everybody who was on that train Carriage was complicit in the murder and I felt somehow this is also now happening again in Iraq in which all the factions which should have been protecting the country and serving the country were actually involved in policing it tearing it apart many months on from the news of the heist breaking it was still unclear how much of the stolen cash had been recovered and where the rest was we've seen we've seen what two and a half billion dollars can leave government coffers where is that money gone I think what we're seeing more and more is the money staying in Iraq which means if you go to Baghdad today you might see big developments the question becomes is this being redistributed across Society or is this part of wider money laundering schemes but we know that there's a lot of money in Iraq right now a lot of money in Baghdad and other cities uh being spent in infrastructure and and these big big sort of projects the fact that it was harder to take all of that money out of the country meant that at least some of it had to stay in Iraq and it's now a city which is on the move again and at least some of that has got to be due to this highest of the century it's not clear if there will ever be serious consequences for the key figures involved in the heist Iraq's Elite continued to squabble and the rest of the money is still nowhere to be seen to read my investigation into the bank heist please click on the link thank you for watching and don't forget to subscribe [Music]

Channel: The Economist

Views: 1,742,741

Keywords: The Economist, Economist, Economist Films, Economist Videos, Politics, News, short-documentary, Iraq, Bank heist, billions, corruption, middle east, war, investigation, uncovered, taxes, laundered

Id: V4-8WDPyS7U

Length: 18min 17sec (1097 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 28 2023