Talk of sending fake or false invoices to the Iraqi Central Bank in order to purchase dollars under the guise of imports has been around for a while, and this has been acknowledged by all the relevant parties and previous Iraqi administrations. Thus, the US Treasury Department’s new declaration documents the discussion regarding “providing money or an Iraqi dinar Counterfeit” to purchase the dollar, which started to surface barely a year ago.
The US Treasury Department said that the Iraqi Al-Huda Bank has been under the control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard since its founding and that it is able to access the American financial system through the use of fictitious documents, phony deposits, identity documents for deceased people, fictitious companies, and the Iraqi dinar. This decision was made public on the department’s official website. Fraud, which allows the participants in a transaction to conceal their names from correspondents—bank relationship providers—while simultaneously revealing that, since the bank’s founding, $6 billion has been smuggled out of Iraq using fictitious import paperwork.
It was common and well-known to talk about submitting fictitious invoices or documents for goods and commodities to the Central Bank in order to purchase dollars, and then transferring the dollars overseas without bringing in the corresponding goods. However, the accusation of purchasing dollars with counterfeit or fake money is something to consider and talk about, especially in light of the recent events. That was mentioned in the US Treasury ruling.
What is the purpose of discussing the fake dinar?
Though the story may be a little “unbelievable,” representatives and economic experts have been talking for the past year about the existence of a counterfeit Iraqi dinar that some parties use to purchase dollars. So how does the counterfeit Iraqi dinar get past the central bank or the black market offices to purchase dollars?
Regarding the rationale behind discussing this issue, it emerged when the dollar started to appreciate sharply on the black market and the Central Bank ceased selling the dollar to any entity, either by accepting any dubious invoices or by selling it to any party at all. As a result, these parties proceeded to purchase dollars from the parallel market in vast and multiple quantities, which resulted in… Owing to the increase in the value of the dollar on the market, witnesses such as money exchangers and office owners began to testify that individuals and groups would arrive with enormous numbers of Iraqi dinars—all of which were in the “new edition”—and would purchase enormous quantities of dollars from the market.
When discussing a new edition and extremely large sums of dinar money, experts stated that the money was either counterfeit or printed specifically for this purpose—some even believe that Iran printed the money so it could be used to purchase dollars from the Iraqi market. If not, then where do these entities originate from? With this enormous sum of money (the new Iraqi dinar) and purchasing enormous quantities of dollars daily?
*According to an earlier Al-Sumaria study, 30% of imports were made using dollars from the secondary market.
Al-Sumaria News released a study a few days ago that contrasted worldwide data on Iraq’s real imports with the Central Bank’s sales of dollars for imports and remittances in 2023, as indicated by the bank’s statistics. Iraq imported items worth over $36 billion in 2023, according to world data, despite the Central Bank’s claim that it sold over $25 billion in remittances for import purposes.
As a result, some 11 billion dollars were sent as remittances outside of Iraq for the purpose of importation; however, these funds were not received via the Central Bank, but rather from the black market. This is when it becomes quite evident how much money, or Iraqi dinars, was used to buy the dollar on the black market—it was around 17. One of the factors casting doubt on the legitimacy of the existence of counterfeit money or dinars used to buy dollars is the one trillion dinars that went to the black market in 2023 with the intention of stealing more than 11 billion dollars from the Central Bank.
