Billmon: Let's Make a Deal

Via Atrios, I see the Iraqi government is preparing an arrest warrant for its former defense minister, the billion dollar man:

Judge Raid al-Radhi, who is head of Iraq's commission on public integrity, said yesterday that he had given Iraq's central criminal court a dossier of evidence against Hazim Shaalan, who was minister of defence under the former government of Ayed Allawi.

"What Shaalan and his ministry were responsible for is possibly the largest robbery in the world. Our estimates begin at $1.3bn [£720m] and go up to $2.3bn," Judge Radhi, who is Iraq's senior anti-corruption official, told Reuters.

Radhi is obviously exaggerating a bit -- compared to the Saudi royal family, or even the U.S. defense industry, Shaalan is, if not exactly small potatoes, then just an average-sized spud. Still, $1.3 billion is a lot of bakhshish, particularly for a temporary minister in an interim government supposedly operating under the watchful eye of a Pentagon audit team (which may explain a lot.) Who knows where the money trail might lead?