June 28, 2004: Federal Reserve Rejects CPA Request for Additional Money after Transfer of Power to Iraq Interim Government

Hours after the Coalition Provisional Authority hands over Iraqi sovereignty to an interim government (see June 28, 2004), the CPA sends requests to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York asking that an additional $1 billion be withdrawn from Iraq’s accounts at the Federal Reserve and be shipped to Iraq. The request is rejected on grounds that the CPA no longer has authority to manage Iraq’s assets. Since April, the Federal Reserve has shipped some $12 billion dollars to the CPA. Five billion of this was sent just within the last six days (see June 22, 2004 and June 25, 2004). A Federal Reserve document states that “effective as of the time AMB Bremer transferred authority (which is being reported in the press as 10:26 am in Baghdad), the CPA no longer had control over Iraq’s assets…. [S]ubsequent to transfer of sovereignty, COL Davis of the CPA sent us $200 million in payment orders to be executed today in New York. We have informed the Colonel that we are not in a position to honor these instructions. Second, also subsequent to the transfer of sovereignty, COL Davis sent us an instruction to transfer $800 million from the DFI main account into the new DFI subaccount, which we understand informally was created by AMB Bremer to hold funds that are ear marked internally within Iraq for payments connected to existing contracts. We have also informed COL Davis that we are not in a position to honor this instruction either (especially since it would require liquidating $1 billion worth of the CBI’s [Central Bank of Iraq] holdings of USG [US Government] securities.” [US Congress, 2/6/2007, pp. 9 ]