Nie Trink Wasser
1st April 2003, 11:21 PM
http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/magazine.php
Origins: For once, a bit of widely-circulated anonymous e-mail is accurate -- what's described in the example quoted above is the actual way of things. A holding company named Montana Management owns about two percent of French media giant, Lagardere SCA, whose Hachette subsidiary includes magazines such as Elle, Woman's Day, Road & Track and Car and Driver. Montana Management, in turn, is owned by Saddam Hussein.
Saddam Hussein's personal fortune is estimated to number in the billions of dollars, and some financial analysts guess it to be between 10 and 20 billion. His secret financial network is made up mostly of shell companies registered in tax havens by lawyers purportedly representing someone else. The hunt for Saddam's money has gone on for years, but his trove has proved to be well hidden and has defied the efforts of those who have searched for it.
Investigators have long believed that much of Saddam's fortune is in Switzerland, squirreled away in a maze of secret accounts, dummy corporations, and front companies which are shielded from public scrutiny by Swiss banking laws. The architect of this secret financial network, Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam's half brother, lived in Geneva from 1989 to 1998 as the Iraqi ambassador to the European headquarters of the United Nations. .........
Origins: For once, a bit of widely-circulated anonymous e-mail is accurate -- what's described in the example quoted above is the actual way of things. A holding company named Montana Management owns about two percent of French media giant, Lagardere SCA, whose Hachette subsidiary includes magazines such as Elle, Woman's Day, Road & Track and Car and Driver. Montana Management, in turn, is owned by Saddam Hussein.
Saddam Hussein's personal fortune is estimated to number in the billions of dollars, and some financial analysts guess it to be between 10 and 20 billion. His secret financial network is made up mostly of shell companies registered in tax havens by lawyers purportedly representing someone else. The hunt for Saddam's money has gone on for years, but his trove has proved to be well hidden and has defied the efforts of those who have searched for it.
Investigators have long believed that much of Saddam's fortune is in Switzerland, squirreled away in a maze of secret accounts, dummy corporations, and front companies which are shielded from public scrutiny by Swiss banking laws. The architect of this secret financial network, Barzan al-Tikriti, Saddam's half brother, lived in Geneva from 1989 to 1998 as the Iraqi ambassador to the European headquarters of the United Nations. .........