From 2004 to 2025 Iraq sold oil worth $1.47 trillion. Since 2003 its Central Bank has sold $932 billion of the country's dollars, at a price below the market price.
Since October 2003 the Central Bank of Iraq has sold $932.3 billion to banks and exchange companies at its own official price, which was lower than the market price. Anyone who bought at the official price could sell for more. That gap was worth about $47 billion. About $30 billion of it arose from January 2023 onwards, when sales rose from $46.8 billion in 2022 to $80.4 billion in 2025 and the market price moved further above the official one. About $22 billion of that came on the $185 billion the Central Bank sent to banks' accounts abroad without saying which banks received it.
This is not a finding that any particular bank or person made that money. It is the value of the gap, which went to whoever got the dollars.
Day by day, the Central Bank recorded how many dollars each bank received. From 2013 to early 2015 it also recorded which requests it turned down, and why. It published those records, then deleted many of them. This encyclopedia restores what survives, together with the cases, the people, the banks, the documents and the articles, for anyone who wants to know where the country's wealth went.
- If you were born in 2003The whole story in plain words: the oil, the money, the banks and the people.
- If you are a prosecutorThe documents behind every figure and every name, with their original addresses and fingerprints.
- If you are a journalist25,880 articles since 2003, by person, bank, subject and year.
- If you are a researcherEvery dataset as CSV and Excel, with a sheet explaining each column.
Dollar sales rose by 72% from 2022 to 2025, and the value of the price gap in 2023 was about 12 times its value in 2022
Central Bank dollar sales and the value of the price gap, billions of US dollars, from 2003 to August 2026
Six layers of corruption, from the wellhead to the land registry
- Before exportOil and fuel taken from pipelines, fields, refineries and ports before any sale is recorded.
- Between the oil sale and the Central BankThe New York account: the money paid in and out of it, and the sums that no published record explains.
- The currency windowDollars sold every day below the market price, to banks and exchange companies.
- Inside the budgetSalaries paid to people who do no work, inflated contracts and money drawn out of state accounts.
- The citizen's daily encounterThe payment demanded at the counter for a service the state already owes.
- State land and assetsPublic land, factories and concessions that pass into private ownership through investment licences.
- The MoneyHow much Iraq earned from its oil, and where each dollar went.
- The LedgerHow many dollars each bank received, and what the Central Bank refused.
- CasesThe major corruption cases documented since 2003.
- People & InstitutionsThe people and institutions named in the record, and the legal status of each.
- AccountabilitySanctions, bans, court rulings and the findings of the watchdogs.
- The RecordThe documents, articles and data behind every figure.