 Controversial Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi would not accept any pardon from Jordan in connection with his conviction for bank fraud, his spokesman said on Friday. Jordanian officials said in Amman on Thursday that the kingdom was considering a request by Iraq to pardon former Pentagon ally Chalabi, but would insist on the return of millions of dollars he was convicted of embezzling. "With reference to the stories in the press about the resolution of the Petra Bank case, Dr Chalabi will not accept a royal pardon," his spokesman Entifadh Qanbar said in a statement. "Such a pardon was offered to Dr Chalabi by His Majesty King Hussein of Jordan in March 1998 but he declined to accept."
Chalabi's resurgence as one of four deputy prime ministers in Iraq's newly elected government has forced his status onto the agenda of Jordanian-Iraqi ties, the Jordanian officials said. They said King Abdullah told Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, who visited Amman this week, that he was ready to review Chalabi's 1992 conviction by a military court. But Qanbar denied Jordanian assertions that Iraq had requested a pardon for Chalabi. "Jordanian officials asked the king to resolve the issue in the interest of relations between Jordan and Iraq," he said. "Dr Chalabi maintains that the shareholders of Petra Bank and its clients must be compensated by the Jordanian authorities for the wrong doing done to them by the martial law committee that took over the bank and squandered its assets."
| Translation from the original Arabic: he needs to be compensated. |
Jordanian investigators estimated the missing bank deposits at $300 million. Chalabi was convicted in absentia of embezzlement, fraud and breach of trust after Petra Bank collapsed in 1989, shaking Jordan's financial system. Jordanian investigators say they unravelled a web of gross irregularities at the bank which Chalabi founded during a long residence in the country, involving the siphoning of depositors' money to Chalabi's offshore accounts. Chalabi, who fled Jordan as the scandal broke, denies any wrongdoing and says the charges were politically motivated. A pardon would lift a sentence of 22 years hard labour on Chalabi. In the past, Jordan has said Chalabi should face trial even though it has never formally sought his extradition from Iraq. Chalabi has threatened to react to any such move by implicating members of the Jordanian establishment.
| "I have a little black book!" |
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