BAGHDAD (AFP) – Iraq’s parliament speaker, who is on a visit to Washington, will query American officials about $17 billion in missing oil money, a lawmaker in Baghdad said on Wednesday.

Osama Al Nujaifi, who left for Washington on Tuesday, will bring up the question of the missing billions, which have been under investigation for years, said Baha Al Araji, head of parliament’s anti-graft committee.

Last week, US officials acknowledged that $6.6 billion in Iraqi reconstruction funds had disappeared. Iraq says $17 billion is missing, and was stolen by corrupt US institutions.

“Nujaifi is visiting the United States to discuss several issues, including the missing funds,” Araji said. “We contacted the US forces in Iraq [about this issue] but we didn’t receive an answer,” he said, adding that Baghdad had approached the United Nations in Iraq to help trace the money.

The cash was from the proceeds of Iraqi oil sales after the 2003 US-led invasion. It was placed in the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI), but went missing in 2004, when US envoy Paul Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) was governing Iraq and managing the fund.

The integrity committee said it had sent a letter to the UN office in Baghdad, but a spokesperson for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) said no such document had been received.

It was a 2003 UN Security Council resolution that authorised the transfer of the vanished Iraqi oil money from the US to Iraq.

In the May 11 letter addressed to the UN in Iraq and seen by AFP, the integrity committee accused US institutions working under the CPA of stealing the money.

“The US institutions [occupation forces] working in Iraq committed a financial crime, stealing the money of the Iraqi people that was allocated for the development of Iraq,” said the letter. “The sum was $17 billion,” it said.

Iraqi government spokesman Ali Dabbagh said in a statement that the issue of the missing billions is being discussed at the highest levels in Baghdad. read more