The Money
Follow the money
From 2004 to 2025 Iraq's federal government sold oil worth $1,470 billion. This page follows that money step by step. It shows how much of it became cash and where the cash was paid. It then shows what was spent directly in dollars, what was sold to the Central Bank, and what no published record explains.
Step one
The oil
Value of federal crude exports from 2004 to 2025
$1,470bn
- Paid in cash into Iraq's account in New York$1,278bn
- Handed to foreign oil companies as crude, as their fee$151bn
- The rest$41.2bnMostly oil products paid for into other state accounts, and payments that fell into another year.
Sources: OPEC; Iraq's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (audited); the account's audited statements; the Central Bank's oil section.
Step two
The account in New York
Cash paid in by buyers from 2004 to 2025
$1,278bn
- Sold to the Central Bank for dinars$929bn
- State imports, paid in dollars$251bnLetters of credit paid from the account from 2004 to 2016 ($153bn), letters of credit paid through the Finance Ministry from 2017 to 2019 ($22.9bn), and government imports in the balance of payments (the record of money entering and leaving the country) from 2020 to 2025 ($75.5bn).
- Foreign debt service$35bn
- Compensation to Kuwait for the 1990 invasion$34.4bn
- The account of the Iraqi and Chinese oil-for-reconstruction agreement$11.3bn
- Occupation-era contracts (the Coalition Provisional Authority and US agencies)$7.6bn
- US military purchases (at least)$5.8bn
- Not itemised in any published record$35.1bn$22.4bn from 2004 to 2019 and $12.7bn from 2020 to 2025. In 2022 alone the figure was $16.2bn; in the other years of that period more was explained than was received, by $3.5bn.
- Came into the account from other sources$25bnThe oil-for-food surplus, returned frozen assets, loans and interest, from 2004 to 2019. Changes in the account's balances make up the rest.
Sources: audited statements of the Development Fund for Iraq and its successor account (KPMG, EY); Central Bank of Iraq; United Nations; balance of payments; our reconciliation.
Step three
The Central Bank
Bought from the Finance Ministry, from 2003 to August 2026
$949bn
- Sold to banks and exchange companies$932bn
- Through the daily sale (the "auction", later the platform)$747bn
- Sent to banks' accounts abroad outside the daily sale, from 2023$185bnThe Central Bank has never said which banks received these dollars.
Source: Central Bank of Iraq, Monthly Statistical Bulletin and annual bulletins (tier A).
Step four
The price gap
Sold by the Central Bank at its official price
$932bn
- Value of the gap between the market price and the official price$47.4bn
- From October 2003 to December 2022$17.4bn
- From January 2023 to August 2026$30bnOf which about $21.7bn on the dollars sent outside the daily sale.
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. How we calculated it.
Behind the numbers
The oil. Not all the oil sold became money: $151 billion of it was handed to foreign oil companies as crude, as their fee for working the oil fields. Buyers paid $1,278 billion in cash into Iraq's account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The account in New York. From that account $34.4 billion went to Kuwait as compensation for the 1990 invasion, and the Finance Ministry sold $929 billion to the Central Bank for dinars, to pay salaries and bills at home. It spent the rest directly in dollars, mostly on state imports. The audited statements show where most of that spending went, but about $35 billion of it cannot be traced to any purpose in a published record. No published record supports the claim that hundreds of billions of dollars disappeared between New York and the Central Bank. The gaps that the records do show lie elsewhere, and the auditors' findings below set them out.
The daily sale. From October 2003 to August 2026 the Central Bank sold $932 billion to banks and exchange companies. From 2008 to 2013, the dollars it sent abroad for private imports came to about $67 billion more than all the goods other countries recorded selling to Iraq, once the state's own imports are taken out (trade records of Iraq's trading partners). The daily sale, year by year.
What auditors and inspectors found, document by document
Each line gives its source and its evidence tier. An amount is the sum the source mentions, not a sum shown to have been stolen.
| Date | Body | Finding | Amount | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 June 2005 | Hearing of a subcommittee of the US House of Representatives (Representative Dennis Kucinich) | The representative said: "$8.8 billion in DFI funds disbursed to Iraq ministries ... still unaccounted for". The statement rests on the finding on controls in the Special Inspector General's report 05-004. | $8.8bn | Tier C Original |
| 21 June 2005 | Hearing of a subcommittee of the US House of Representatives (Representative Henry Waxman) | The representative said nearly $12 billion in cash was withdrawn from the account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and flown to Iraq on 484 pallets. | $12bn | Tier C Original |
| 25 February 2007 | Iraq's Board of Supreme Audit, as cited in the notes to the account's statements | The Board found "financial and legislative violations" in the contract files of the Coalition Provisional Authority and US agencies. Iraqi bodies reserve the right to seek compensation. | Tier A Original | |
| 2007 to 2008 | Ernst & Young | Barter exports of crude oil and oil products to Syria were recorded by the oil marketing company but not in the account. | $392.9m | Tier A Original |
| 2007 to 2008 | Ernst & Young | Letters of credit that had expired were not yet cancelled, so the cash deposits held against them were not returned to the account. | $656.3m | Tier A Original |
| 27 July 2010 | Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (United States) | The US Department of Defense could not properly account for $8.7 billion of the $9.1 billion it received from the Development Fund for Iraq. It could not document how $2.6 billion was spent. | $8.7bn | Tier A Original |
| 27 July 2010 | Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, citing a report of 2005 | Paying agents in the South-Central region could not support more than $96.6 million in cash. A criminal investigation led to the conviction of 8 officials of the Coalition Provisional Authority and the Department of Defense. | $96.6m | Tier A Original |
| 2011 | Iraq's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, the reconciler | The Federal Reserve Bank of New York did not provide data on the account's receipts for the reconciliation of 2009. | Tier A Original | |
| 2012 | Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, report 12-008 | The Coalition Provisional Authority had access to $20.7 billion of the Fund's money, directed about $14.1 billion and held $6.6 billion at the hand-over. The Department of Defense cannot support $119.4 million of the $193.3 million spent from $217.7 million of cash kept in a palace vault. | $6.6bn | Tier A Original |
| 2013 to 2015 | Ernst & Young | The Central Bank moved the value of crude oil given to foreign oil companies from the account to the oil receipts account, so that the 5% compensation was paid on it: $2.45 billion in the first half of 2012, $4.45 billion in 2012, $7.65 billion in 2013, $11.75 billion in 2014 and $5.70 billion in 2015. These transfers make the reported oil receipts of those years larger than the cash received. | $29.5bn | Tier A Original |
| 15 December 2015 | Ernst & Young, auditor of the account | The auditors qualified their opinion because the Ministry of Oil received no production reports from the Kurdistan Region. The qualification was repeated every year from 2012 to 2019, and Kirkuk was added from 2015 to 2017. | Tier A Original | |
| 15 December 2015 | Ernst & Young | The auditors qualified their opinion because they could not determine whether all proceeds of frozen assets reached the account or were sent to other government bodies. | Tier A Original | |
| 2015 to 2019 | Ernst & Young and KPMG, auditors of the account | Contracts from the years of the Coalition Provisional Authority that US agencies paid from the account were never reconciled by either side. | $7.6bn | Tier A Original |
| 2016 | Iraq's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, report for 2014 | Differences between the Ministry of Oil and the foreign oil companies over the costs to be repaid to the companies were "not justified by both parties". | $5.8bn | Tier A Original |
| August 2017 | International Monetary Fund, balance of payments statistics | Errors and omissions in the balance of payments (the record of money entering and leaving the country) were minus $27.1 billion in 2014 and minus $7.4 billion in 2013. These are outflows that the official statistics cannot attribute. | $27.1bn | Tier A Original |
| 27 October 2017 | KPMG, auditor of the account, for the Committee of Financial Experts | There is no written agreement between the Finance Ministry and the Central Bank on how the account's dollars are turned into dinars. The Central Bank withdraws dollars from the account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and credits dinars to the ministry's account 70009 at the official rate, less a commission of 15 dinars per dollar. | Tier A OriginalArchived copy | |
| 27 October 2017 | KPMG | The Central Bank and the Finance Ministry keep no records of the cash deposits paid from the account to the Trade Bank of Iraq's correspondent banks (JPMorgan Chase and Citibank) against letters of credit. | Tier A OriginalArchived copy | |
| 27 October 2017 | KPMG | The Finance Ministry does not reconcile payments made from the account with the ministries each month. Its latest matched trial balance was for 2013. | Tier A OriginalArchived copy | |
| 27 October 2017 | KPMG | There is no formal manual of policies and procedures for the account. The Central Bank has no business continuity plan. | Tier A OriginalArchived copy | |
| 2 November 2017 | KPMG Kawasmy, auditor of the account | Crude oil was used as direct payment outside the oil receipts account: $345 million for the Karbala refinery contract and $194 million for a joint sales partnership with ENI. | $539m | Tier A Original |
| 2018 | Iraq's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, report for 2016 | The report found unexplained differences of $1.659 billion in the costs and fees repaid to foreign oil companies, and unjustified differences of $20.6 million between the oil marketing company and the buyers. | $1.7bn | Tier A Original |
| 2019 | Finance Ministry, restated accounts | Loans from the International Monetary Fund and the Trade Bank of Iraq, $5.30 billion in all, had been recorded as receipts of the account. When they were reclassified, the Fund's cash balance became negative, which the statements describe as "contrary to its nature". | $5.3bn | Tier A OriginalArchived copy |
| 8 March 2021 | Mustafa Fouad Abbas & Co., member firm of Ernst & Young | Crude oil given to foreign oil companies as payment ($10.8 billion in 2019 and $10.9 billion in 2018) was never recorded in the oil receipts account. The Central Bank's arrangement for transferring its value to that account was stopped in 2016. The 1.5% compensation due on this oil was not deposited in 2019, although UN Security Council Resolution 1956 requires it. | $10.8bn | Tier A OriginalArchived copy |
| 8 March 2021 | Member firm of Ernst & Young | Crude oil from the Majnoon field was sold by the oil marketing company, and the proceeds were deposited in Basra Oil Company's account at the Trade Bank of Iraq. They were recorded as sales under a service contract and left out of the list of export sales. | $844m | Tier A OriginalArchived copy |
| 8 March 2021 | Member firm of Ernst & Young | One cargo of crude oil swapped with Iran, worth $60.38 million, was credited against the Ministry of Electricity's dues to Iran and did not pass through the oil receipts account. | $60.4m | Tier A OriginalArchived copy |
| 2022 | Iraq's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, citing the audit of the account | Sales of exported oil products worth $7.94 billion, from the start of the account to the end of 2020, were never deposited in the oil receipts account or recorded in the Fund's statements. The money was held in the oil marketing company's bank accounts and later recorded as treasury revenue. | $7.9bn | Tier A Original |
| 2022 | Iraq's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, report for 2019 and 2020 | The Kurdistan Regional Government did not deliver the budgeted 250,000 barrels a day to the oil marketing company in 2019, and delivered no oil revenue to the federal treasury in 2020. | Tier A Original | |
| December 2023 | Iraq's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, report for 2021, prepared by BDO | The Finance Ministry did not provide the statement of the account. The independent administrator could not compare the figures of the oil marketing company and the buyers with the receipts at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. | Tier A Original | |
| December 2023 | Iraq's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, report for 2021, from Central Bank data | The sales the oil marketing company reported for 2021 ($69.44 billion, including oil products) were $9.59 billion, or 13.8%, more than the buyers paid into the New York account ($59.85 billion). The report explains the difference by credit notes and the timing of payments. | $9.6bn | Tier A Original |
| 2024 | Iraq's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, report for 2022 | The Kurdistan Regional Government valued its pipeline exports at $12.33 billion. At the oil marketing company's prices they were worth $14.12 billion, a difference of $1.79 billion, or 12.65%. | $1.8bn | Tier A Original |
| 8 October 2024 | Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, citing a quarterly report of October 2012 by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction | An Iraqi audit reportedly found that 80% of about $1 billion a week bought at the auction was "tied to illegal transactions". | Tier D Original | |
| 2025 | Iraq's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, report for 2023, and Central Bank records | Payments from China Zhenhua, under the Iraqi and Chinese agreement on oil for reconstruction, go to accounts at China CITIC Bank International that the Central Bank supervises. They are not sold to the Central Bank for dinars. | $11.3bn | Tier A Original |
| 25 September 2026 | Our analysis of trade records | From 2007 to 2013 the Central Bank's transfers abroad were between $6.7 billion and $17.3 billion a year more than the non-government imports that Iraq's trading partners recorded. After adding freight and insurance, the difference from 2008 to 2013 is about $67 billion. There was no such excess from 2015 to 2023. | $67bn | Tier B Our data |
| 25 September 2026 | Our reconciliation of the account | Of the oil receipts paid into the New York account in 2022, $16.2 billion is not explained by the Central Bank's purchases, by the recorded direct uses of dollars (government imports, debt service and the China account) or by the change in the Finance Ministry's dollar deposits at the Central Bank. | $16.2bn | Tier B Our data |
Source: Audited statements of the Development Fund for Iraq; the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction; Iraq's Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative; the IMF; US congressional hearings.
Year by year
In billions of US dollars. 2003 is a part year (from May).
| Year | Oil exports | Paid in crude | Cash into New York | Kuwait | Sold to the Central Bank | Not sold to the Central Bank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2003 | 7.5 | 3.9 | 0.2 | 0.9 | 3.0 | |
| 2004 | 17.8 | 17.4 | 0.9 | 10.8 | 6.6 | |
| 2005 | 23.6 | 23.1 | 1.2 | 10.6 | 12.5 | |
| 2006 | 30.5 | 29.8 | 1.5 | 18.0 | 11.8 | |
| 2007 | 39.4 | 37.8 | 1.9 | 26.7 | 11.1 | |
| 2008 | 63.5 | 61.9 | 3.1 | 45.5 | 16.4 | |
| 2009 | 39.3 | 39.0 | 1.9 | 23.0 | 16.0 | |
| 2010 | 51.6 | 51.4 | 2.6 | 41.0 | 10.4 | |
| 2011 | 83.0 | 2.4 | 79.4 | 4.0 | 51.0 | 28.4 |
| 2012 | 94.1 | 5.2 | 89.3 | 4.7 | 57.0 | 32.3 |
| 2013 | 89.4 | 8.5 | 81.6 | 4.5 | 62.0 | 19.6 |
| 2014 | 84.3 | 13.1 | 71.7 | 4.2 | 47.5 | 24.2 |
| 2015 | 49.2 | 13.6 | 37.3 | 0.0 | 32.5 | 4.9 |
| 2016 | 43.7 | 12.4 | 28.1 | 0.0 | 25.7 | 2.4 |
| 2017 | 59.7 | 10.6 | 46.5 | 0.0 | 40.4 | 6.2 |
| 2018 | 84.2 | 10.4 | 72.9 | 0.4 | 52.2 | 20.7 |
| 2019 | 80.0 | 10.8 | 67.5 | 1.0 | 58.9 | 8.7 |
| 2020 | 44.1 | 6.9 | 37.4 | 1.1 | 30.7 | 6.7 |
| 2021 | 79.8 | 10.2 | 59.9 | 1.6 | 46.0 | 13.9 |
| 2022 | 121.1 | 10.5 | 105.5 | 0.0 | 53.4 | 52.2 |
| 2023 | 102.6 | 12.9 | 83.9 | 0.0 | 64.0 | 19.9 |
| 2024 | 101.0 | 12.5 | 82.8 | 0.0 | 68.7 | 14.2 |
| 2025 | 88.6 | 11.0 | 74.0 | 0.0 | 63.7 | 10.2 |