A Swiss lawyer on Monday rejected a newspaper report that he was involved in managing Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's hidden fortune abroad.<\/P><\/p>\n
The British newspaper The Sunday Times reported on Sunday that Elio Borradori helped funnel payments to the Iraqi leader from arms deals and other contracts for about a decade. <\/P><\/p>\n
US officials estimate Saddam channelled between four and seven billion pounds(6.3 and 11 billion dollars, 4.9 and 10.2 billion euros) into accounts around the world, which must now be tracked down.<\/P><\/p>\n
"I have never dealt with Saddam Hussein's fortune and I never met him," Borradori told the Swiss news agency ATS. "I did have contacts with some of his personal staff and especially with his nephew, Saad al-Mahdi, whose financial interests I managed in Lugano," he added.<\/P><\/p>\n
The newspaper reported that al-Mahdi controlled an account dubbed "Satan" with the Banca del Gottardo in the Bahamas. <\/P><\/p>\n
The Lugano-based bank said on Monday that it had found no record of the account at its subsidiary in the Bahamas. Borradori confirmed that al-Mahdi was executed when he was summoned to Baghdad shortly after his marriage in Paris. He had been accused of embezzling the Iraqi leader's funds.<\/P><\/p>\n
"I tried to stop him from going, but in vain. As soon as he arrived in Iraq, he was beheaded," he added. <\/P><\/p>\n
Borradori's Lugano-based consultancy had managed about 400 offshore companies in offshore havens such as Liechtenstein and Panama before it was declared bankrupt in the early 1990s.<\/P><\/p>\n
In February 2002, the 78 year-old lawyer received an 18-month suspended prison sentence after being accused of embezzling some of his clients' funds. <\/P><\/p>\n
A psychological evaluation ordered by the court also questioned Borradori's mental health, and accorded him diminished responsibility.<\/P><\/p>\n
According to the newspaper, the former banker could not remember details of his work for Saddam. The Swiss government last week said that it hoped to have a "clearer picture" of any Iraqi funds that might be held in accounts in Switzerland after it ordered banks, lawyers and accountants to declare them.<\/P><\/p>\n
A freeze on transfers to Iraq implemented for more than 12 years under UN sanctions had been aimed at stopping money flowing back to Saddam Hussein's regime. <\/p>\n
AFP<\/B><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It was reported that there was an account dubbed 'Satan' with the Banca del Gottardo in the Bahamas<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241934","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241934\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}