1
EstablishedThe fund was Iraqi money: 54% of its receipts were oil revenue, 39% the Oil-for-Food surplus and 5% Iraqi assets frozen abroad.
20.94billion dollars into the fund
14.29billion paid out by 28 June 2004
12.47billion in the last six months
2.1%of US reconstruction funds spent by July 2004
Where Iraq’s money came from, and where it went
Iraqi money spent fast, US money slow
2
EstablishedTwo speeds: by 28 June 2004 the CPA had paid out 68% of what entered the Iraqi fund. Of the US reconstruction fund ($18.4 billion), only $458 million — 2.5% — had been spent by 13 July, according to the Congressional record, and 2.1% according to the CPA Inspector General.
3
EstablishedThe rush at the end: $1.82 billion was paid in the first seven months (May–December 2003) and $12.47 billion in the last six (January–28 June 2004), about 7 times as much.
4
EstablishedJune 2004 alone: $3.43 billion transferred to the Ministry of Finance and the Kurdistan Regional Government. The report says June transfers were larger than earlier months “to ensure the Interim Government of Iraq had sufficient funds to meet obligations subsequent to the transfer of authority”. (The June split between the two comes from column order in damaged OCR; the total matches.)
5
Established$5.14 billion was paid for projects the CPA itself administered on behalf of Iraqi ministries, $4.89 billion of it in 2004.
6
Established$0.73 billion in letters of credit through JP Morgan, 60% of it for the Ministry of Trade (food).
7
Open questionThe auditor could not confirm that all exported oil reached the fund: “the internal control systems over the Iraqi oil industry were not sufficient to ensure the completeness of export sales”, and the gap could not be quantified. How much oil was sold outside the fund? The documents do not say.
8
Doubtful2003 receipts are 10,307,494 thousand dollars in the first report and 10,288,819 in the comparison column of the 2004 report: a difference of 18,675 thousand that our copy does not explain.
Transfers to the Ministry of Finance and the KRG, month by month
Letters of credit in 2004 by ministry
Method, confidence and limits
Source: the two statements of cash receipts and payments of the Development Fund for Iraq, audited by KPMG for the International Advisory and Monitoring Board: 22 May – 31 December 2003 (AUD-8546a576) and 1 January – 28 June 2004 (AUD-089588e6). All amounts are in thousands of dollars, as in the statements.
Extraction: figures were transcribed by hand from the two documents. The 2004 payment lines are damaged in the machine-extracted text, so we rebuilt them from the notes (monthly transfers to ministries; letters of credit by ministry) and checked that they sum to the printed total (12,472,162) and that the closing balance matches the printed one (6,647,736). The full file with every source: dfi_sources_uses.json.
The US comparison: $18.4 billion appropriated by Congress for the reconstruction fund (IRRF) in November 2003. Spending figures are from the CPA Inspector General’s report to Congress (30 July 2004) and a Congressional hearing record (22 July 2004, citing 13 July figures). “Obligated” means contracted; “expended” means actually paid.
Limits: this file covers the Iraqi fund only; US reconstruction contracts are detailed in oversight reports and are not analysed here yet. The auditor itself could not confirm the completeness of oil revenue. Figures are in current dollars, not adjusted for inflation.