People with link to Saddam sought:
Private investigators and U.S. officials are looking at more than 15 key figures believed to have financial ties to Saddam Hussein (news - web sites), including:
* The half-brother. Many of Saddam's front companies were set up by his half-brother, Barzan Ibrahim Hasan, former head of Iraq (news - web sites)'s Mukhabarat secret service and Iraq's former ambassador to Switzerland, investigators say.
One of the ''most wanted'' former Iraqi leaders on U.S. soldiers' playing cards, Barzan was captured recently in Iraq.
''He can name names and detail the scope of the operation,'' says Nicholas Peck, a partner at Gryphon Investigations, who has researched Iraqi assets.
* The British billionaire. Nadhmi Auchi, a 65-year-old London businessman born in Iraq, was part owner of a small bank that laundered ''dirty money,'' according to a private 1996 report by the former Belgium ambassador in Luxembourg.
At one point, the bank -- Banque Continentale du Luxembourg -- held deposits made by Saddam and other dictators, including Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, the report alleges. In European media reports, Auchi has denied knowing Saddam.
The financier has run into legal troubles since moving to Great Britain two decades ago.
In 1987, Auchi helped Italian and French firms win a huge oil pipeline contract from Iraq by secretly paying Iraqi officials, according to a 1993 statement made by an Italian banker to prosecutors in Milan.
Auchi allegedly was paid $16.5 million for his work. The money was laundered through a Channel Islands shell company to a Panama firm run by Auchi called Barsy Services, according to the statement.
USA TODAY received the documents on Auchi from investigator Christine Negroni of Kreindler & Kreindler, a New York law firm investigating Iraqi assets on behalf of Sept. 11 attack victims.
In another business kickback scandal involving Auchi, British police last month arrested and charged him with conspiracy to defraud in a corruption trial involving French oil giant Total Fina Elf. Auchi's attorney, David Corker in London, did not return calls. Corker has denied the charges in British media reports.
* The Swiss financier. Elio Borradori, a retired 75-year-old banker, said he set up offshore firms as havens for Saddam's money after meeting him and Barzan in 1979, according to the British newspaper Sunday Times.
Borradori allegedly funneled millions of dollars through MEDP, or Mediterranean Enterprises Development Projects, a Swiss firm linked to 300 front companies worldwide, according to a private investigator who declined to be named and the Sunday Times.
A U.S. intelligence officer who is hunting for Saddam says Borradori appears to have been channeling and hiding Saddam's money, but investigators have not determined his exact role.
Once, Borradori told the Sunday Times, Saddam gave him a bullet engraved with the banker's name. Saddam's henchmen handed out silver bullets to warn people they shouldn't cross the dictator, says another U.S. intelligence officer.
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