Iraq Invites America's Banks
Al-Zaidi asked America's banks into Iraq. A US airport post in Baghdad was handed back. Import dollars now need customs paid first. CNN's sale is cleared.
Friday, September 25. Inside his country's Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi sat down with a table of American banks and financial institutions. He told them why Baghdad's banks have been weak. In part, his office wrote, it was isolation: too little openness to the international banking world, and to American banks above all. Then he asked them in.
Back in Baghdad the same day, the two governments signed the US Embassy's Diplomatic Support Center at the capital's airport over to the Iraqi state, one of the last steps before the coalition's mission ends on September 30. One side of the relationship is handing back an American post. The other is being invited to open accounts.
Around those two moves, the CBI told every bank in the country that import money now leaves only after customs is paid. A currency gang in Baghdad was charged. And in Washington, the news operation that shaped a decade of war coverage is getting new owners, possibly with Elon Musk among them. Today we take the news in that order.
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