Saddam: where is the money?
By Olivier Guitta
The French press has been focusing in the past few weeks on Saddam Hussein�s villas on the French Riviera. Indeed Saddam owned two estates one in Cannes valued at over $14 million and the other one in Grasse valued at $8 million. These properties were purchased in 1982 by a Liechtenstein company, owned by a close associate of the Iraqi despot. Saddam must have liked the region that he visited along with then French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac in 1975: Saddam�s only trip to the West. Saddam never set foot in the villas though. The Iraqi state is trying to get official ownership of the two properties but for the time being the UN is administrating the frozen assets of the Liechtenstein company. This is just the tip of the iceberg: indeed Saddam�s assets have been estimated at between $8 billion and $20 billion. Almost two years after Saddam�s arrest, what�s taking so long for this money to go back to the Iraqi people?