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Iraq's Billions | |||||||||||||
In the first year after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the US led Coalition Provisional Authority was in charge of twenty billion dollars of what was essentially Iraqi cash, mainly past oil revenues in a fund set up by the United Nations. The money was spent. The problem is that nobody really knows how it was spent. There are no records for what happened to nearly half of the cash. As part of a documentary series on Iraq reconstruction, our business correspondent Mark Gregory has been following the trail of that Iraqi oil money and why is so much of it unaccounted for? The US has now spent nearly 40 billion dollars on the rebuilding of Iraq. In real terms that's twice as much American taxpayers money has gone on Iraq as was spent rebuilding Germany after World War 2. Many Iraqis say you'd hardly know. But, as the mood in America swings towards disengagement, it will be increasingly up to Iraqis to finance the work themselves. One thing that seems to be standing in their way, though, is corruption. Our business correspondent Mark Gregory has been investigating how much of a problem is it? You can hear more on the wider issues of Iraqi reconstruction in Mark Gregory's documentary programme: 'The Baghdad Billions', going out on Thursday 09th and Friday 10th on the BBC World Service. | ||||||||||||||
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Iraq's Billions - Part 1
Blasts in Algiers