Suspected gold bars found in truck near Iraq border

AMERICAN troops confiscated what they believe may be gold bars worth up to €423m after stopping a truck at a roadblock yesterday.

The truck carrying 2,000 bars was stopped at a military checkpoint near Qaim, a north-western city close to Iraq’s border with Syria, US Central Command said.

But the bars must still be tested to make sure they are gold, Central Command added.

Two people were arrested, but it is unclear who they are, what nationality they are, and where they got the bars.

“The occupants told the soldiers that they had been paid about $350 to pick up the truck in Baghdad and drive it to an unnamed individual in Al Qaim,” Central Command said.

“The two had been told that the bars were bronze.”

Soldiers from the US 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment conducted a search of their Mercedes truck and discovered approximately 2,000 40-pound bars, measuring 10 inches by 5 inches.

Billions of dollars are missing from Iraq since the war. Saddam Hussein ordered that nearly one billion dollars be taken from Iraq’s Central Bank shortly before the US began bombing Baghdad. He sent his younger son Qusay to grab the cash in the middle of the night.

Qusay and Abid al-Haimd Mahmood, Saddam’s personal assistant, took the money away in three tractor trailers in an operation that took two hours to complete.

The stolen money amounted to a quarter of the Central Bank’s hard currency reserves.

A US Special Forces officer, Colonel Ted Seel, said intelligence indicated a convoy of tractor trailers crossed the border into Syria shortly after the heist, but that the contents of the trucks were unknown.

It is possible that much of the money has already been recovered however. Approximately $650m found by US forces in one of Saddam’s palaces last month might have been from the Central Bank.