By Christian Miller
Washington
June 23, 2005

It weighed 28 tonnes and took up as much room as 74 washing machines. It was made up of $100 notes and officials had to find enough cargo planes to hold the money.

The $US2.4 billion ($A3.09 billion) was delivered to Baghdad on June 22 last year for use by Iraq's interim government - the largest one-off cash transfer in the New York Federal Reserve Bank's history. The transfer was disclosed during a US Congress hearing this week. Both Republicans and Democrats appeared taken aback by the volume of cash sent to Iraq - nearly $US12 billion from March 2003 until June 2004, a report by Democrat Congressman Henry Waxman said. The Iraqi funds, generated mostly from oil revenues, had been held in trust by the Federal Reserve under a United Nations resolution.

Republican Christopher Shays criticised the Pentagon's handling of Iraqi funds. "It's very clear that... we didn't have systems in place to account (for the funds)," he said.

Defence Department officials acknowledged weaknesses in the system but said much of the money had been handed to Iraqi officials, who spent it on expenses such as worker salaries. Previous audits found that more than $US8.8 billion in such funds could not be accounted for.

- Los Angeles Times

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