Central Bank of Iraq
The Central Bank of Iraq logo
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| Headquarters | Baghdad, Iraq |
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| Established | 1947 |
| Chairman | Ali Mohsen Al-Allaq |
| Central bank of | Iraq |
| Currency | Iraqi Dinar |
| Website | Official website |
The Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) (Arabic: البنك المركزي العراقي) is the central bank of Iraq.
After World War I, Iraq's monetary system was administered by the British Mandate of Mesopotamia until 1931, when the Iraq Currency Board was established in London to issue the new Iraqi dinar and maintain its reserves. The Iraq Currency Board pursued a "conservative monetary policy, maintaining very high reserves behind the dinar", which was "further strengthened by its link to the British pound".
In 1949, the currency board was replaced by the National Bank of Iraq, which had been founded two years before on November 16, 1947. The National Bank of Iraq became the Central Bank of Iraq in 1956. Since switching over to its own central bank, the Iraqi monetary system was "replete with mismanagement, coercive stop-gap measures, and the production of an unstable, unreliable currency which ha[d] not been tradable on the international market for [many] years". Saddam Hussein wielded monetary and the dinar as "a powerful instrument of repression".
In March 2003, on several occasions beginning on March 18, the day before United States forces entered Baghdad, nearly US$1 billion was stolen from the Central Bank of Iraq. This was considered the largest bank heist in history until 2011. That month, a handwritten note signed by Saddam Hussein surfaced, ordering $920 million to be withdrawn and given to his son Qusay Hussein. Bank officials state that Qusay and another unidentified man oversaw the cash, boxes of $100 bills secured with stamped seal known as security money, being loaded into trucks and trailers during a five-hour operation. Qusay Hussein was later killed by the U.S. military in a battle.
After the 2003 invasion of Iraq and Saddam Hussein's downfall, the Central Bank of Iraq was established as Iraq's independent central bank by the Central Bank of Iraq Law 2004, with authorised capital of 100 billion dinars. According to the law, 100% of the bank's capital stock would be held by the State and would not be transferable.
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