Bags of cash found under floor of bank destroyed in battle for Mosul
Workers clearing rubble from Iraq’s Central Bank building in the shattered city of Mosul have pulled bags of waterlogged banknotes from safes under the floor.
The grand building is still riddled with bullet marks and gaping holes, and the walls are charred and blackened – a reminder of the battle to liberate the city from ISIS in 2017.
Workers found sacks of banknotes inside black plastic bags after they gained access to the safes through a hole in the floor that had been filled with detritus.
“After starting to fix the building and removing rubble, we were able to access the safes,” said Hussein Al Zaidi, chief of the Mosul branch of the Iraqi Central Bank.
He said the banknotes were badly damaged after the coffers were engulfed in groundwater during an air strike as part of the offensive to take Mosul from the militants.
“We discovered banknotes in bags, small bills,” he said.
So far, the workers have retrieved 175 bags, he said, without specifying the total value of the notes.
When ISIS militants overran Mosul in the summer of 2014, they seized gold bars and hundreds of millions of dollars from the bank. The country’s second city, Mosul was the militants’ Iraqi “capital” of their self-proclaimed “caliphate”.
The Iraqi army and a US-led coalition retook the city in 2017 after intense bombardment and fighting that left it in ruins.
The battle to drive out the extremists destroyed large parts of the city. Thousands of civilians were killed and more than 900,000 displaced.
Iraq declared victory over ISIS later that year.
This month, Iraq said it had captured the group’s suspected finance chief, Sami Al Jaburi, in Turkey.
ISIS militants seized gold bars and hundreds of millions of dollars from the bank when they overran Mosul in 2014