Questions About Practices of Private Iraqi Banks

According to Brayhi, “Over the past four years, the local press has been preoccupied with talk of the Iraqi government trying to get its hands on the foreign reserves of the central bank. This kind of talk is fundamentally false because that is not possible. No one tried to understand this fact when we stated it repeatedly.”

He concluded by saying: “Had the press supported the Iraqi Central Bank in trying to regulate the work of privately held banks and impose serious monitoring of its transactions, which is its mandate under the law, instead of being preoccupied with talk of the government’s attempt to get its hands on the bank’s foreign reserves, it would have created awareness of the importance of this matter among the public and the central bank would have succeeded in its undertaking.”

Omar al-Shaher is a contributor to Al-Monitor’s Iraq Pulse. His writing has appeared in a wide range of publications including France’s Le Monde, the Iraqi Alesbuyia magazine, Egypt’s Al-Ahaly and the Elaph website. He previously worked for Al-Mada covering political and security affairs and as a correspondent for the Kuwaiti Awan newspaper in Baghdad from 2008-2010.