"Innovative" Methods For Smuggling Dollars In Iraq... And The Perpetrators Are "Safe
Reports Economy News – Baghdad Two judges specializing in integrity, money laundering and smuggling cases revealed the latest methods used in money laundering and smuggling crimes in Iraq, which are represented by the use of electronic cards or fictitious imports, while they indicated that the biggest obstacles facing the pursuit of money laundering is the monopoly of the dollar for certain categories covered by legal decisions.
The judge of the Integrity and Money Laundering Investigation Court, Iyad Mohsen Damd, told Al-Qada newspaper that “currency smuggling is one of the crimes that has economic and social impacts, most notably harming the national economy by taking hard currency out of the country and pushing it into circulation in the economic market of other countries.”
He explained that “currency smugglers have developed their means and methods of smuggling money, and one of the most recent methods that have been presented to us in practical reality is smuggling currency through prepaid electronic payment cards, where the accused agrees with ordinary citizens to issue payment cards in their names in exchange for small amounts that he gives them, then he fills the cards, carries them and takes them out of the country through airports, and then withdraws the amounts in cash through ATMs in the countries to which he travels.”
He pointed out that "some criminals resort to the currency sales window at the Central Bank of Iraq to buy dollars, and then transfer the money to foreign bank accounts under the pretext of importing goods without there being a real import operation."
For his part, Judge of the Third Karkh Investigation Court, Muhammad Khalid Jiyad, reveals other modern methods used in currency smuggling and money laundering operations, which are represented by “importing goods from neighboring countries through fictitious deals or attaching forged invoices in which prices are inflated to high levels or through (K-Card) cards.”
He explains that “currency smugglers collect a large number of Key Cards and Visa Cards after filling them with national currencies and traveling with them outside Iraq and withdrawing the amounts deposited in them in dollars or by purchasing electronic game cards from the Internet in dollars, as well as through drug and weapons trade and oil smuggling.”
He stressed that "traders and importers evade legal accountability by importing under fictitious names, as most of them are not registered for taxes or do not possess an import certificate that originally allows them to conduct commercial exchange."
“The biggest obstacle facing the concerned authorities in pursuing foreign currency smugglers is the fact that the ownership of the dollar is restricted to a certain group or parties that control the devaluation or increase of the local currency against the dollar, which has created a kind of dominance and monopoly supported by an umbrella and official decisions,”
he said, noting that “the financial policy has failed to achieve stability in the exchange rate of the dinar against the dollar, in addition to the difficulty of uncovering people who launder money and smuggle hard currencies, as this type of crime is covered by a commercial nature.”
He also attributes the reasons for the lack of control over smuggling to “the border crossings that are not controlled by the General Authority of Customs, as well as the presence of some smugglers outside Iraq and of different nationalities, which makes it difficult to reach them and hand them over to the Iraqi state due to international law, as the handing over of smugglers is according to the principle of reciprocity and extradition agreements between countries.”