Iranian news agency Fars, in a report on October 2 2008, quoted an Iraqi security official as saying that the Bush administration had seized $5 billion from late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s stash of cash and assets in the past three years, including from bank accounts in Bulgaria, Switzerland, Denmark, France and Japan.

Saddam was ousted by US-led forces in 2003 and hanged in December 2006 after a trial in an Iraqi court. After the toppling of the Saddam regime, Washington said that it had launched a search for his “blood money” assets and money around the world, which it said had been built up in part from irregularities in the United Nations oil-for-food programme.

Estimates of Saddam’s assets around the globe have varied from $6 billion to $30 billion.

Fars quoted Iraqi security official Ali al-Baghdadi as saying: “Eleven of Saddam's relatives managed the secret accounts and acted as his financial brokers dealing with European banks”.

Some of Saddam’s properties and accounts were in Eastern European states and Yemen, al-Baghdadi said.

“The US was able to locate personal property and real estate belonging to the former dictator, his family, and his collaborators, with a total value of more than $5 billion, and take possession of this treasure," he said.

"They ended up in Washington's coffers," al-Baghdadi claimed.

He said that cash, as well as stocks in a Dutch pharmaceutical company, had been seized.

“(It's) a treasure that the Americans, as well as the government in Baghdad, prefer not to talk about,” he said.