The Wall Street Journal Jordan Slandered My Father at Saddam's Behest August 7, 2003 By Tamara Chalabi
BAGHDAD -- Ahmad Chalabi, my father, is here in Iraq, sitting on the Governing Council of Iraqi nationals that will help ours become a free country. Iraqis from all regions and religions line up daily to meet him at his home. They know his lifelong cause is democracy for all Iraqis, not just a chosen few. To them he is a good man, and an attractive leader. Yet many in the Western media seem unable to mention my father's name without regurgitating a 14-year-old Jordanian libel that he wrongfully diverted assets of his own Petra Bank. The real story couldn't be more different. Petra Bank was seized and destroyed by those in the Jordanian establishment who'd become willing to do Saddam Hussein's bidding. That Jordan has branded my father as an "asset diverter" would be comic, were it not for what it says about that kingdom's servile complicity with Saddam. In 1978, Ahmad Chalabi formed Petra Bank in Amman. It prospered, growing to be the second largest bank in Jordan. In the '80s, as a pillar of Jordan's banking system, he fought to obstruct Saddam's ability to finance his war with Iran, as well as his weapons programs. He warned about a grain-sales financing scheme, whereby Iraq obtained funds from an Italian bank branch in the republic of Georgia to finance arms purchases. He challenged the ways in which Jordan profited from arms sales to Iraq and angered Saddam by pressuring Jordan's Central Bank not to issue Iraq letters of credit on Saddam's terms. In early 1989, Petra submitted its annual financial statement to the Central Bank, showing continuing asset growth -- and nothing that would justify singling it out for military seizure. The authorities approved the financial accounts, just as they had in the past. Petra Bank, if left alone, would be prospering today. Instead, here is the sequence of events: -- In April 1989, a shuffle in the Jordanian government brought to power a group of officials with intimate ties to Saddam. On Aug. 3, 1989, out of nowhere, they declared that my father had diverted assets of Petra Bank, so much so that it was a risk to the nation of Jordan. Invoking a wildly inapplicable 22-year-old martial-law decree, issued to stave off economic crisis triggered by Israel's occupation of the West Bank, Jordan literally attacked Petra Bank. Armed soldiers, backed by tanks, stormed its Amman offices, then being operated by unarmed civilian bank employees. -- My father left Jordan, driving himself to Syria after being warned by a sympathetic member of the government that the plan was to arrest him and deliver him to Saddam. His family was told by a former U.S. diplomat that he was smart to leave as his life was at risk. -- After leaving Jordan, he continued to speak out against Saddam, predicting that he would invade Kuwait. Almost immediately after my father sounded this warning, Jordan swept down again. Using Arthur Andersen's Geneva branch, it issued a new audit that rewrote the financial condition of Petra Bank to make it appear insolvent on the date it was seized. Assets of 476 million Jordanian dinars ($541 million) were "revalued" downward to 297 million dinars ($337 million). Later, the bank's liquidators reported a collection rate of over 150% on the bulk of the devalued assets -- a recovery rate that in itself shows the revaluation was a ruse. -- The true asset picture approved just months before the takeover made this new audit a lie. If it could have dared to challenge the authorities, the public needed to ask but one question: Why did Jordan denounce Petra Bank in 1989, a year when the bank had met all its overseas obligations while Jordan itself was so financially troubled that it had declared a moratorium on all its own payments? -- Not coincidentally, the same Jordanian military that had taken over Petra Bank took Saddam's side when he invaded Kuwait. -- The military occupation of Petra Bank was enough to destroy public confidence in the bank. The actions of those who took over assured its ruin. They failed to honor commitments made by the bank, accelerated business loans that were not in default and not due, foreclosed on assets securing those loans, and then sold the assets at bargain prices to individuals closely tied to the Jordanian government. Employees in three countries, including the U.S., lost their jobs, and the Chalabi family lost tens of millions of dollars. -- In December 1991, my father went on U.S. television and described how Jordan was helping Iraq violate sanctions on weapons procurement, producing documents to back up his claims. He spoke of Iraq's many accounts with the Central Bank of Jordan to finance these purchases. The head of that bank denied this, while admitting that "mysteriously" some $55 million of Iraqi money had shown up in his bank after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. My father also revealed that Jordan turned that money over to Saddam, even though Iraq owed impoverished Jordan hundreds of millions of dollars. -- A few months later, Jordan set up a State Security Court to try my father in absentia. The court was established on April 1, 1992, met only once -- on April 8 -- and the next day issued a 223-page decision finding my father guilty. If any more than this "efficiency" is needed to show that the trial was illegitimate, consider this: The month before the trial started, the martial law on which the court's decision was based had been abolished! Jordan did all this for Saddam Hussein. But things are different now. My father has demanded the records from this military tribunal and the basis for the lengthy decision -- one written, Jordan claims, in just one day. He may well invoke a more balanced forum to recover his losses and good name if Jordan does not make a clean break with its quisling past and publicly declare that it has no evidence of wrongdoing by Ahmad Chalabi. --- Ms. Chalabi recently completed a Ph.D in history and Middle East studies at Harvard. She works with her father in Iraq.
