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By Waheed Ghanim.

This article was originally published by Niqash. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.

Basra’s farmers say the oil industry is “occupying” their land – and that the one thing the Iraqi government is forgetting in its race to get oil firms in and farmers out, is the rising cost of the food Iraq can no longer grow itself.

Just over a year ago, Saleh Mohammed was farming in the Qurna area, west of the southern Iraqi city of Basra. But then the oil companies came. And today the land that Mohammed once farmed belongs to international oil giant, Exxon Mobil. And Mohammed himself works as an employee on the periphery of one of the oil production facilities.

Mohammed is 30 and his field of expertise is agriculture; he knows the ways of nature. He worked on his 2.5 hectare property planting wheat, barley and dates and everything he knew, he learned from his parents and grandparents, who had farmed the land before him. He really doesn’t know much about the oil industry. Yet, like so many others here, he too now wears the grey overalls and cap of oil facility workers.

“When the American, Russian and British oil companies started to come here, the government just wanted us to disappear,” Mohammed says. “They even offered us financial compensation to do so. Now some of us work as watchmen, some of us as gardeners and some as labourers with the oil companies for around US$600 a month. And I didn’t really have a choice in this matter – I have a wife and four children to look after.”

Mohammed is not alone. It’s estimated that there are 43 billion barrels of oil under the ground in this region. Almost all of Iraq’s oil currently comes from here. All of which clearly means big business, not only for the oil companies, but also for the Iraqi government.

The owner and three employees of a US business promising high returns on the Iraqi dinar have been indicted by a federal grand jury on conspiracy and wire-fraud charges for allegedly duping investors out of more than $23 million.

According to reports, Rudolph M. Coenen, 47, the owner of Bayshore Capital Investments LLC, is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering. Three others — Bradford L. Huebner, 65, Charles N. Emmenecker, 65, and Michael L. Teadt, 66 — were also named in the indictment.

Jacksonville.com reports that to promote the expertise, Coenen was presented as a wounded Iraqi veteran who had deep knowledge of dinar trading and was a former vice president at JP Morgan Chase. According to the indictment, Coenen never served in the first Gulf War and only worked at JP Morgan Chase for one day as a loan officer. Claims he had been awarded the Purple Heart were also false, the indictment said.

"These defendants made false statements time and again to convince people to part with their savings and hard-earned cash," U.S. Attorney Steven Dettelbach said in news release. "The fact that one defendant falsely claimed he was wounded while fighting in Iraq is particularly egregious."

The men allegedly promoted dinar sales through a website and in conference calls by saying the investments were protected by the U.S. government and had the potential to rocket in value under a revaluation of the currency.

Attorney Richard Kerger, who represents Huebner, said the charges are baseless and he didn’t believe any laws were intentionally broken.“These people are getting fair value for their money,” he said of the investors. “This is a complicated setting but there are reasonable answers.” Kerger said he was not as familiar with Coenen’s case. He said Coenen has been representing himself in court.

(Sources: Jacksonville.com, Toledo Blade)

By John Lee.

We get many enquiries at Iraq Business News relating to the future of the Iraqi dinar (IQD), for example:

• Will the Iraqi dinar increase in value?
• Will the currency be re-denominated, dropping the 'three zeros'?
• Is it wise to buy Iraqi dinar?

Firstly, Iraq Business News is not in a position to give investment advice. Our mission is to provide our readers with the highest quality information on the business and economy of Iraq.

As the value of the Iraqi dinar affects trade, we will continue to report on any possible re-valuations and/or redenominations as soon as information is available.

We hope that this information will be useful to the key decision-makers in Iraqi business, and to all who are interested in the development of the country; gamblers and people involved in get-rich-quick schemes/scams are not our target readership.

It's clear from the correspondence we receive that some people, who like to think of themselves as 'investors', genuinely believe that at the stroke of a pen they will make a 1,000-fold return on their purchase of dinars.

Those people might like to consider some questions before putting any further funds at risk: Read more ...

By John Lee.

In a recent article on Forbes magazine website, legal expert and anti-scam campaigner Jay Adkisson challenges the idea that vast wealth will be made from a dramatic appreciation of the Iraqi dinar, saying, "You can't fix stupid".

"Scams involving the arbitrage of foreign currencies have been around as long as there have been, well, foreign currencies", he explains, "but ... why the Dinar scam has been largely successful [is that] with the Dinar scam you can actually get the cold hard Dinars if you want them."

"Yep, suckers around America have their closets and garages full of bales of Dinars, just waiting for that glorious day when they will re-valuate. Which is never."

"To help sell the scam, the scam artists have set up all sorts of websites and bulletin boards and newsletter and social media and you-name-it to try to create the impression that the Dinars are valuable and are about to re-valuate at any moment.

"I've had people tell me that their Dinars are going to re-valuate 'within the week' or 'by the end of the month', and they've been telling me for years."

Better Business Bureau (BBB) is warning consumers across the United States to be wary when considering any foreign currency investment, particularly the Iraqi dinar.

Over the years, BBB complaints nationwide about dinar investments allege a number of scams surrounding the profit potential of dinar currency investments. For this reason, BBB advises consumers looking to buy dinar to familiarize themselves with the most popular scams involving Iraqi dinar and recommends making an informed decision.

According to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the growing number of investment opportunities in recent years has been accompanied by a spike in foreign currency trading scams.

While there are legitimate firms that trade foreign currency in foreign exchange markets, others utilize promises of large profits, religious associations, and charity affiliations to take consumers’ money.

“The web is filled with promises of making millions of dollars by investing in Iraqi currency,” said Catherine Ralls, BBB Trade Practices & Investigations Specialist. “Consumers should know that investing in promises of fast profits from currency trades could lead to potential losses.”

BBB provides the following tips to those considering investing in Iraqi dinar:

Just as the dinar speculators predicted, Iraq has re-valued its currency 1000-fold, making dollar-millionaires of ordinary folk from Anbar to Arkansas!

The unprecedented 100,000% revaluation was welcomed by businesses all across the world, who saw nothing strange about paying $1,000 today for something that was priced at $1 yesterday. At the stroke of a pen, foreign companies now pay their cleaning staff in Iraq more than they pay board-level directors back at home.

Dozens of 'investors' in America partied the night away, as news of their windfall came through.

Billy Bob, from Alabama, exclaimed: “I knew it would happen, just like the Lord said it would!” When asked why he only invested $1,000 if he knew it would revalue, he declined to comment.

Peggy Sue, of Butte, Montana, said:

“Wooo hooo!!! I knew if I just said 'Go RV!' one more time on an internet forum that it would somehow make it all come true – you just have to believe hard enough!”

A local newspaper in Georgia, USA, reports that some local residents are buying Iraqi dinars in cash form, in the hope of profiting from a revaluation of the currency.

According to the Moultrie Observer, people are buying boxes of crisp Iraqi dinars that look fresh off the printing press. It goes on to quote a local commodities trader as saying he could possibly think of worse investments than Iraqi money at this time, but would be hard pressed to do so:

"If you want to make a wild investment, I'd buy Russian rubles ... It (the dinar) would be one of the most foolhardy investments you can make."

Meanwhile, CNBC columnist Kelley Holland says the dinar is the subject of a variety of scams, and regulators and watchdogs are sounding alarms:

"If someone has been telling you about the rosy prospects for the dinar, please, please, be careful. It's almost certainly too good a story to be true."

On Thursday, Komo News in Seattle, Washington, ran a news report on the dinar and interviewed one woman who had actually bought what she believes to be Iraqi dinars on the internet. You can find the full video report on the next page ...

We get many enquiries at Iraq Business News relating to the future of the Iraqi dinar (IQD), for example:

• Will the Iraqi dinar increase in value?
• Will the currency be re-denominated, dropping the 'three zeros'?
• Is it wise to buy Iraqi dinar?

Firstly, Iraq Business News is not in a position to give investment advice. Our mission is to provide our readers with the highest quality information on the business and economy of Iraq.

We hope that this information will be useful to the key decision-makers in Iraqi business, and to all who are interested in the development of the country; gamblers and people involved in get-rich-quick schemes/scams are not our target readership.

But as the value of the Iraqi dinar affects trade, we will continue to report on any possible re-valuations and/or redenominations as soon as information is available.

Regarding the future direction of the dinar, we do not have a crystal ball; in the past the ramping up of petroleum production has somtimes caused currencies to rise, but as our expert blogger Mark DeWeaver explains, this is not always the case. Read more ...

CNTV video on rumoured revaluation of Iraq's currency, the Iraqi Dinar:

By Tom Cleveland, market analyst for Forex Traders, exclusively for Iraq Business News. Forextraders.com is an online resource for the foreign exchange market.

“Buy on the rumor, sell on the news” is a time-honored investment phrase that is oftentimes more confusing than the wisdom it attempts to impart. The meaning relates primarily to company securities that appreciate in expectation of a big news announcement. Early speculation drives ups the price, such that when the real announcement is made, most investors sell on the news to take their profits, often driving the price down, rather than up. “Pump and Dump” stock frauds also follow a similar scenario, but in this case, criminals benefit and investors lose.

A similar situation has been building for years, some say as many as eight years, surrounding the potential “revaluation” of the Iraqi Dinar. As the rumor would have it, the Iraqi economy has stabilized, and the potential for enormous foreign currency reserves from increased oil exports will drive the value of the Dinar to unconscious levels versus the U.S Dollar. The government authorities will be forced to revalue the currency from 1,175 to 3 per Dollar, resulting in an outrageous windfall for anyone owning stockpiles of the currency. Does something here sound a little too good to be true?

In actuality, the Iraqi Dinar, or “IQD”, is a “controlled” currency. The central bank of Iraq determines the exchange rate and must support that rate by maintaining adequate foreign currency reserves to handle capital flows across its borders. The IMF permits countries with a transitional economy to implement currency controls in order to stabilize their economy during its redevelopment phase. Presently, international banks will not accept the Dinar, and it is not traded on any forex exchange. Actual purchases can be made through currency dealers that have been authorized to buy and sell banknotes that are already in circulation.