1. Ahmed Abdel Hadi Chalabi was an Iraqi dissident politician, convicted fraudster and founder of the Iraqi National Congress who served as the President of the Governing Council of Iraq and a Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq under Ibrahim al-Jaafari.
50 Facts About Ahmed Chalabi
1. 2.
Ahmed Chalabi is believed to have been an Iranian agent and had ties with Iran.
3.
Ahmed Chalabi failed to win a seat in parliament in the December 2005 elections, and when the new Iraqi cabinet was announced in May 2006, he was not given a post.
4.
Ahmed Chalabi later came under investigation by several US government agencies after switching his allegiances to become an instrument of pro-Iranian influence in Iraqi politics.
5.
Most, if not all, of this information has turned out to be false and Ahmed Chalabi has been called a fabricator.
6.
In 2008, Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance Director Jay Garner stated that he believed Ahmed Chalabi was an Iranian agent.
7.
In January 2012, a French intelligence official stated that he believed Ahmed Chalabi to be "acting on behalf of Iran".
8.
Ahmed Chalabi was the son of a prominent Shia family, one of the wealthy power elite of Baghdad.
9.
Ahmed Chalabi's family retired from public life to a farmhouse near Baghdad when the military seized power.
10.
Ahmed Chalabi left Iraq with his family in 1958, following the 14 July Revolution, and spent most of his life in the United States and the United Kingdom.
11.
Ahmed Chalabi was educated at Baghdad College and Seaford College in Sussex, England before leaving for America.
12.
Ahmed Chalabi published three mathematics papers between 1973 and 1980, in the field of abstract algebra.
13.
In 1971, Ahmed Chalabi married Leila Osseiran, daughter of Lebanese politician Adel Osseiran.
14.
Ahmed Chalabi was a bold and shrewd investor, amassing a fortune of $100 million.
15.
The bank failed, causing a $350 million bail-out by the Central Bank, after which Ahmed Chalabi fled the country.
16.
Ahmed Chalabi was convicted and sentenced in absentia for bank fraud by a Jordanian military tribunal to 22 years in prison.
17.
Ahmed Chalabi maintained that his prosecution was a politically motivated effort to discredit him sponsored by Saddam Hussein.
18.
Ahmed Chalabi was convinced that the Iraqi military would rise up to overthrow the dictator.
19.
Ahmed Chalabi was banned from those frequent visits to CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia.
20.
Nonetheless, Ahmed Chalabi was doggedly determined: in 1998 Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act passing into American law the objective of "regime change" in Iraq.
21.
The website for Petra Bank contains a press release stating that Ahmed Chalabi would refuse the pardon.
22.
Ahmed Chalabi headed the executive council of the INC, an umbrella Iraqi opposition group created in 1992 for the purpose of fomenting the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
23.
Ahmed Chalabi was involved in organizing a resistance movement among Kurds in northern Iraq in the early mid-1990s.
24.
When that effort was crushed and hundreds of his supporters were killed, Ahmed Chalabi fled the country.
25.
Ahmed Chalabi lobbied in Washington for the passage of the Iraq Liberation Act.
26.
Ahmed Chalabi was said to have had political contacts within the Project for the New American Century, most notably with Paul Wolfowitz, a student of nuclear strategist Albert Wohlstetter, and Richard Perle.
27.
Ahmed Chalabi enjoyed considerable support among politicians and political pundits in the United States, most notably Jim Hoagland of The Washington Post, who held him up as a notable force for democracy in Iraq.
28.
Ahmed Chalabi was a special guest of First Lady Laura Bush at the 2004 State of the Union Address.
29.
Ahmed Chalabi received advice on media and television presentation techniques from the Irish scriptwriter and commentator Eoghan Harris prior to the invasion of Iraq.
30.
Ahmed Chalabi returned under their aegis and was given a position on the Iraq interim governing council by the Coalition Provisional Authority.
31.
Ahmed Chalabi served as president of the council in September 2003.
32.
Ahmed Chalabi denounced a plan to let the UN choose an interim government for Iraq.
33.
Up until this time, Ahmed Chalabi had been mentioned formally several times in connection with possible future leadership positions.
34.
Ahmed Chalabi contended that documents in his possession detailed the misconduct, but he did not provide any documents or other evidence.
35.
In June 2004, it was reported that Ahmed Chalabi gave US state secrets to Iran in April, including the fact that one of the United States' most valuable sources of Iranian intelligence was a broken Iranian code used by their spy services.
36.
Ahmed Chalabi allegedly learned of the code through a drunk American involved in the code-breaking operation.
37.
On 1 September 2004, Ahmed Chalabi told reporters of an assassination attempt made on him near Latifiya, a town south of Baghdad.
38.
Ahmed Chalabi reported he was returning from a meeting with Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Najaf, where a few days earlier a cease-fire had taken effect, ending three weeks of confrontations between followers of Muqtada al-Sadr and the US military, at the time.
39.
Ahmed Chalabi regained enough credibility to be made deputy prime minister on 28 April 2005.
40.
On protesting IMF austerity measures, Al-Uloum was instructed to extend his vacation by a month in December 2005 by Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari, and Ahmed Chalabi was reappointed as acting oil minister.
41.
The Iraqi National Congress, headed by Ahmed Chalabi, was a part of the United Iraqi Alliance in the 2005 legislative election.
42.
Ahmed Chalabi attended the 2006 Bilderberg Conference meeting outside of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
43.
In October 2007, Ahmed Chalabi was appointed by Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki to head the Iraqi services committee, a consortium of eight service ministries and two Baghdad municipal posts tasked with the "surge" plan's next phase, restoring electricity, health, education and local security services to Baghdad neighborhoods.
44.
Ahmed Chalabi "is an important part of the process," said Col.
45.
The role fell into disuse, but in early 2010 Ahmed Chalabi was accused of reviving this dormant post to eliminate his political enemies, especially Sunnis.
46.
On 26 January 2012, The New York Times reported Western intelligence officials expressing concern that Ahmed Chalabi was working with the leading opposition group in Bahrain, Al Wefaq National Islamic Society.
47.
The period leading up to Ahmed Chalabi's death was marked by regular pronouncements released by Ahmed Chalabi in various formats in which he would expose alleged corruption of highest officials in the Paul Bremer-led Provisional Coalition Authority and in the Iraqi Government led by Nouri Al Maliki.
48.
Ahmed Chalabi died on 3 November 2015, four days after his 70th birthday, having apparently suffered a heart attack at his home in Kadhimiya, Baghdad.
49.
Ahmed Chalabi died while serving as member of the Iraqi Parliament and chaired its Finance Committee.
50.
Ahmed Chalabi was laid to rest at the Kadhimiya Holy Shrine, a high honour bestowed by Iraq's influential Shia theocratic establishment.