During Saddam Hussein's reign, he amassed countless fortunes. Although the dictator has been dead for years, his vast wealth has been the focus of attention and tracking by relevant institutions around the world. According to the British "Daily Mail" report, the family of an Iraqi-born British engineer was recently killed in the French Alps. As the investigation of the case deepens, a series of details uncover the tip of the iceberg of Saddam's secret vault for this tragedy...
The Alps Massacre
On September 5, 2012, 50-year-old Saad Al-Shiri took his wife, Iqbal, 47, his mother-in-law Sussila Eraf, 74, his eldest daughter, Zarnab, 7, and his youngest daughter, Zena, 4, on a holiday in the Alps.
Xi Li drives a BMW car and the family drives on the mountain roads around the Alpine village of Ansi Savaran. The youngest daughter Zena sat in the middle of the back seat, her mother and grandmother guarded her sides, and the eldest daughter, Zarnab, sat in the passenger seat.
The sights of the Alps attract Healy, who are tired of driving. He parked the car on the side of the road and got out with Zarnabu, talking and laughing. At this moment, a Frenchman, Morel, was passing by them on a bicycle.
Suddenly, a gunshot shattered the tranquility of the Alps. Tragedy strikes in an instant, with Shree, Zanab and passing Morey all being shot dead by a gunman. At that moment, thinking of his wife and daughter in the car, Healy climbed into the car, locked the door, and tried to start the car despite the pain. Unfortunately, when the car turned around, it fell into a mud puddle. In the panic, the car sank deeper and deeper, and the bullet roared past again, hitting Healy on the head, and Healy was unfortunately killed.
The killer did not stop, but continued to shoot inside the car, killing Iqbal and Ellaf one after another.
Fortunately, a few seconds before the gunshots rang out, mother Iqbal quickly unfastened her youngest daughter Zena's seat belt and told her, "Hide, don't make a sound!" In just a few short seconds, Zina left her seat and lay nervously at the feet of her mother, who covered her with her large skirt. Zina, who was only 4 years old, closed her eyes. She was smart and didn't cry out of extreme fear.
At this moment, Zina heard the voice of the murderer. He was a man, and he said only one sentence: "They're all dead." Zena lay quietly at her mother's feet, holding her breath, overwhelmed. The tranquility of the aftermath of the disaster and the smell of her parents' blood surrounded her, and she trembled in horror.
When the police arrived at the crime scene, everything returned to calm. They found Zena trembling at Iqbal's feet. Although unscathed, Zena was visibly frightened, and the whole person was frightened.
When the police found out, Zanab was still breathing. However, she suffered a serious head injury. Police speculate that Zanab survived because the killer ran out of bullets. According to statistics, the killer fired 25 bullets.
Immediately after the shooting, the French and British governments paid close attention. At the time, French President François Hollande, who was on a visit to London, publicly promised at a news conference that he would catch the gunman. To that end, France had set up a special investigation team, and The First Prosecutor of Ansi, Eric Mérard, was responsible for investigating the case.
Eric started with victim Healy. Healy is an ordinary Iraqi-born Briton who lives with his family in a neighbourhood in Surrey, southeast England. He holds degrees in engineering and computer science. He has been an engineer for the past 20 years and became a British citizen in 2002.
Surprisingly, Healy works for Surrey Satellite Technologies in the UK. That forced Eric to speculate that he was most likely to be targeted by Iranian spies, who had always wanted access to high-resolution satellite technology. However, after an investigation, the police denied this claim. According to police investigations into the crime scene and bullets, the killer used a 60-year-old Ruger P08 pistol.
Later, Eric investigates Hillary's mother-in-law, who is also one of the victims, Elaf. Since her husband's death in 2011, she has been living in Sweden with her 46-year-old son, Hyde, who suffers from mental illness. Araf's neighbors said they hadn't seen Hyde in a month. Court documents show that Hyde, who suffers from schizophrenia, was arrested by police for repeatedly threatening his mother with violence.
After ruling out the possibility of a mentally ill person committing a crime, Eric's investigation reached an impasse. Just when he was overwhelmed, Healy's family portrait of his dead father caught his attention—Eric had seen the old man on the news. Hariri's father, Katin, was an old subordinate of Saddam Hussein, and his family originally lived in Baghdad. Because of the discord with Saddam, there was a lot of commotion, and finally Katyn fled to England with his family.
Praying mantis catcher yellow finches in the back.
After learning that Healy's father, Katyn, was Saddam's old subordinate, Eric reported the case to French intelligence.
Through the investigation, it was learned that during Saddam's frenzied enrichment, Healy's father, Katin, as a close friend of Saddam's, helped him run the company and helped him launder money through these companies. However, in the late 1970s, Katyn suddenly broke up with Saddam Hussein completely and led his family to move out of Baghdad and settle in Britain. A few years later, Al Mahadi and two of his partners, who also helped Withdam Hussein launder money, were called to Baghdad and executed by Saddam Hussein, raising suspicions that they had completed their task of laundering money for Saddam. They are said to have "bleached" Saddam Hussein with $2 billion.
Is it true that the Healy family was also killed for completing a money laundering mission? Eric began going door-to-door with Cyrie's neighbors, hoping to get more clues. Brown, a neighbor of Xili, said that the relationship between the Xili family and the community is very good, and the two families are as close as relatives. However, after Katim's death in 2011, he left his two sons with millions of pounds in property. Hillary's younger brother Zeid has been trying to keep the legacy to himself. And Healy had always believed that the intelligence agencies of various countries were spying on him, and he was not guarding his brother at all. Healy's chosen resort is just an hour's drive from the southwestern Swiss city of Geneva, and you can stop by to clear your account. But he died under the gun of a professional killer hired by his brother!
At this point, the case is caught up in another puzzle. A multi-million pound inheritance, in Katim's position, simply could not get so much money. So, where does the money come from?
While Eric was searching for answers to the source of the money, the police discovered the Healy family's secret accounts in France and Switzerland. An intelligence official in Munich has revealed that the money in the accounts was left behind by Saddam Hussein. The source of Saddam's secret funds was discovered by the German Federal Intelligence Service.
Germany's Federal Intelligence Service knows where the money is going and how to track it down. In fact, they have spent decades monitoring cash transactions between Western countries and Iraq.
The secret of Saddam's vault
In the end, as the investigation of the intelligence agencies of various countries deepened, the truth came out to the world. It turned out that in the late 1970s, Katyn and Saddam Hussein got into trouble just to hide their eyes and ears.
Saddam Hussein was born in 1937 to a poor family on a river in Tikrit, Iraq. He was born an orphan. At that time, his house was made of adobe, and Saddam Hussein, who was accustomed to cold treatment, was determined to make a lot of money from an early age and completely get rid of poverty and poverty.
After Saddam Hussein became Iraq's president in 1979, he began to use his power to amass wealth. Before the 1991 Gulf War, a senior Iraqi official defected, revealing to the world's leading media that Saddam Hussein's wealth was estimated at $10 billion.
From 1997 to 2001, Saddam Hussein and his son Uday were in the same position
The United Nations Oil for Food program has secured a huge $6 billion in funds through kickbacks and smuggling. Most of the money was obtained through the illegal export of oil to Turkey, Jordan and other countries, while others were obtained through tobacco import control.
In the 1970s, Saddam's subordinate, Katim, built a vast network of companies in Lugano, Switzerland, covering finance, tourism real estate, oil and tobacco. He registered companies in tax havens Italy and Liechtenstein, and then through these companies, he conducted complex circular transactions in the fields of finance, tourist real estate, oil and tobacco, and ultimately achieved the purpose of money laundering. In Liechtenstein, the local company registration office can easily register a company for foreigners without having to tell the authorities who the real owner of the company is.
Soon, Katyn was suspected of laundering money for Saddam, so Saddam Hussein staged a double-material trick with him, pretending to turn his face, making a big fuss on the political stage, and then executing two subordinates related to the matter. Katyn took the opportunity to move out of Baghdad, settled in The Uk with his family, and began operating in the UK, helping Saddam Hussein transfer funds. The few million dollars left in the Bank of Geneva were due to the fact that there was too much money laundering at the time, too many accounts, and it was missed in the process of money laundering cycles.
To be sure, Saddam Hussein built an incredibly large network of companies, known in the United States as the "Saddam Hussein Company." He has invested all over the world, including Panama, Switzerland, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Cyprus and Italy. Most of these businesses are very stealthy, but there are also open projects.
In March 2006, Saddam Hussein was ranked in the top 10 with a net worth of $2 billion in Forbes magazine. Quoting official and private U.S. estimates, BusinessWeek said Saddam Hussein and his family could have $7 billion to $10 billion in assets overseas. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Armitage also said Saddam Hussein's wealth was about $7 billion. In addition, there is a bolder guess. CBS reported that Saddam Hussein has about $10 billion to $20 billion in hidden assets around the world, and the value of those assets is still increasing. Just as Iraq seems to have no chemical or biological weapons, how much of Saddam's possessions remains a mystery.
When the U.S. government offered a $25 million reward to step up its search for Saddam Hussein, it was also secretly searching for Saddam Hussein's vast fortune. When U.S. forces occupied Baghdad, investigators found that large amounts of money were being transferred from bank accounts controlled by the Iraqi government to private accounts in the Middle East.
On December 30, 2006, Saddam Hussein was hanged. Saddam's death brought the mystery of his property into the grave. However, the countries of the world have not let their guard down. They are still closely following the latest developments in Saddam's vault, which they are secretly searching, eager to get a piece of the pie.