intelligence

You have been told for years the dinar is a scam. A dead currency in a broken country.  Iraq’s corrupt political class hoarded it anyway, because they knew it would […]

The arrests that locked down Baghdad’s Green Zone are the opening move…The recovery keeps climbing. Investigators have pulled more than 107 million dollars from the oil-ministry case alone, including $14 million found inside […]

Iraq’s parliament came back from recess today, and Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi now has about two weeks to finish building his government and finish cleaning it out before he flies […]

Look past the charge sheet and Sunday was about something rarer than theft, it was about the end of being untouchable.  For 20 years a whole class of people in […]

This is a once-in-a-lifetime, generational opportunity. The windfall itself is the easy part. The hard part is what you do with it – the jurisdiction you pick, the structure you hold […]

Iraq quietly opened a dedicated state account to count the cash it is pulling out of the walls and the holes and the offshore accounts of its own political class…Investigators […]

Within two weeks al-Zaidi flies to Washington to meet President Trump, and he means to land with a finished government. A clean house is the price of the meeting. The meeting […]

Before dawn on Sunday, Iraq’s prime minister sent the counter-terror force built to fight ISIS into Baghdad’s Green Zone and arrested 47 of the country’s own political class. Among them was the […]

After the windfall, the wealthy do one thing first. They disappear…There is a whole industry that makes its living finding the newly wealthy. The people who keep what they receive share […]

Iraq’s new central bank governor took his first sit-down with any foreign government this week, and it was with the United States. The central bank made the meeting the lead […]

The file to delete the three zeros from the dinar is live and moving. A new 25 dinar note has already been shown. The governor before this one was moved […]

You cannot get onto clean [financial] rails with dirty hands, so Baghdad is washing them in public. The Jumaili oil-ministry case…keeps finding more body bags. Latest to fall is a former […]

When the first conversation [with an exchange  bank] feels great, that is the bank doing its job.  The most common mistake is stopping at one bank because the first conversation […]

The worst money decisions happen in the first 48 hours.  Fidelity, UBS and Finra all say the same thing, the worst financial decisions after sudden wealth are made in the first […]

The official rate sits at 1,300 to the dollar while the street trades nearer 1,450, and the central bank has denied a rate change for the second time this month. […]

When a currency like the dinar finally reprices, the gain goes to the people who were already positioned before the announcement. The ones who wait for the headline are too […]

For weeks the only question out of Baghdad was who. Who runs the central bank. Who fills the empty chairs. Today it turned into when, and Baghdad answered. Al Hikma, one […]

Bessent…walked through who is coming back…Venezuela, sanctioned and shut out, is coming back to invoice in dollars. The Iranians…”will be invoicing in dollars.”  Russia…would want back in once the war […]

The biggest banks are quietly building for a wealth event.  JP Morgan tripled its private client locations and plans 160 plus new centers, Wells Fargo callout it their best recruiting year […]

Iraq gets its volume back and watches the price fall out from under it. The barrels are moving again. They are just worth less…So that is what he is carrying to […]

Al-Zaidi flying to Washington…Why he is really going…?  Iraq is not a poor country.  It sits on one of the largest oil reserves on earth and holds around $90 billion in […]

The day the money lands, you stop being the customer everyone ignored and become the client everyone wants. Lawyers, trustees, bankers, the names on the hundred-year-old doors. They will be warm. […]

Two years ago if you ran a bank in Iraq and wanted to move a single dollar to New York you mostly could not.  No western bank would clear it.  […]

Iraq’s oil and gas law, the HCL, has sat dead since 2007. This week Baghdad and Erbil shook hands on the revenue split…It decides who owns the barrel and who banks […]

Iraq put its central bank in the hands of the man who used to police its dirty money…Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi presided over the formal handover at the Central Bank […]

Trump just did what no other President has been able to accomplish. He ended the war with Iran.  And he signed it at the Palace of Versailles.  Dig deeper. Versailles is […]

Iraq quietly handed its central bank to the man who spent his career hunting dirty money. The anti-fraud chief now runs the vault.  You do not put a watchdog on […]

Iraq handed its central bank to a man who spent his career chasing dirty money.  Its anti-fraud chief now sits on top of the vault.  The same day, the US Treasury published […]

Trump signed the Iran deal at Versailles. The war is over on paper. Oil slid under 80 dollars. Baghdad now has days, not excuses, to seat a cabinet and a […]