BAGHDAD — Army commanders said Wednesday that American military personnel had removed about $12.3 million from huge caches of U.S. currency that were found by fellow soldiers in recent days in an exclusive neighborhood once home to senior Iraqi officials.
Investigators have recovered all of the stolen money, officials said, and commanders have ordered soldiers not to search for more hidden cash in the area where they discovered about $656 million in boxes inside cottages on Friday. Civil affairs officers found an additional $112 million Tuesday inside kennels in the same area.
One commander said three galvanized aluminum boxes containing an additional $12 million found at the cottages were allegedly removed and hidden by five soldiers for several hours before being recovered by investigators Saturday morning.
Those three boxes of cash had not been reported to commanders. With that amount, a total of about $780 million has been found in sealed structures in a tree-lined Tigris River area at the edge of the sprawling Presidential Palace complex in central Baghdad.
The currency apparently was left behind by Baath Party and Republican Guard officials as they fled the U.S. invasion.
Two of the three stolen boxes, each originally containing $4 million in tightly wrapped bundles of $100,000, were still sealed when they were recovered in a stone-lined canal near a mansion, commanders said. The third, which had been pried open, was retrieved near the operating base of soldiers implicated in the thefts.
A soldier with knowledge of the missing money from the opened box near the base had pangs of guilt and told investigators where to find the cash, said Lt. Col. Philip deCamp, who is participating in the investigation. That soldier has been cleared, he said, but five others are still under investigation.
Those five soldiers, who have not been charged, have cooperated with investigators to varying degrees, according to DeCamp. They face actions ranging from a letter of reprimand to a full court martial, which could include prison time.
The soldiers under investigation are from the 10th Engineer Battalion, which is attached to or under what the military calls "operational control" of Task Force 4-64 of the 2nd Brigade. The Times incorrectly reported in Wednesday's editions that the suspects were members of the 4th Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment, which forms the core of Task Force 4-64.
