Baghdad to Beirut currency counterfeit ring busted

Iraq announced the arrest of one of the country’s most dangerous currency fraud mafias on Tuesday, found to have forged Iraqi dinars worth billions of dollars.

The gang, which was found to have Lebanese links, was seized after a joint operation between Iraq’s office of judicial investigation and the Iraqi intelligence services.

Some of the group's members have fled after reportedly forging currency worth millions of dollars.

The gang was discovered after a woman and her daughter were arrested in Baghdad airport when found carrying large sums of money.

The woman later confessed to carrying a sum of up to 100 million forged Iraqi dinars (equivalent to 80,000 dollars) and confessing her activities link back to Beirut.

The arrest triggered a further investigation, in which a trail of related crimes were found. A mafia-like network was uncovered with an undisclosed number of people who were part of the group counterfeiting money between Iraq and Lebanon.

Al-Qatha’a, a newspaper run by Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council, said the gang has a large printing press in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital city, which was seized, along with forged currency worth $1.5 billion Iraqi dinars (between $2 million and $200,000 dollars).

There are also suspicions that the gangs were operating before the outbreak of the Syrian crisis with counterfeit money being smuggled through Syria before the civil war began.