12.30pm
KIRKUK, Iraq - US troops seized a truck laden with suspected gold bars worth up to US$100 million ($173.22 million) at a checkpoint in northern Iraq, the second such find in four days, they said on Monday.
Major Kevin Petit said soldiers found 999 bars under a tarpaulin in an old
Mercedes on Sunday during a search near the oil city of Kirkuk and questioned the truck's three occupants.
The driver had said he had been paid $300 to carry what he said were copper bars from Baghdad to north Iraq.
"These are not minted bars. The gold was melted down quickly," Petit said as he clambered on the truck to show the impure and roughly moulded 10 kg (20 lb) bars at Kirkuk airbase.
Signs saying "Do not enter, under investigation by the US government" have been attached to the barbed-wire enclosure which surrounds the turquoise truck, parked among US military facilities within the base.
US troops said they suspected the men had been unaware of what they were carrying. No weapons were found and the three were being questioned.
"Based on the sensitivity of the load it will probably be transferred to Baghdad," Petit said.
On Thursday, US forces found some 2000 bars believed to be gold worth as much as $500 million during a random search of a truck near the Syrian border. That driver also said he was being paid $300 for the work.
US troops found an estimated $600 million in US notes stashed in boxes near Baghdad palace complexes last month.
This month, US officials said Saddam's son Qusay took around a billion dollars in currency from the central bank in Baghdad just before the war, but that most had been recovered.
- Reuters
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