The claim in the Christian Aid report is:

"The US-controlled coalition in Baghdad is handing over power to an Iraqi government without having properly accounted for what it has done with some $20 billion of Iraq's own money, says a new report published by Christian Aid."

The UN gave control of Iraq's oil revenues, and other monies, to the US. I never did figure out why they did that. According to the report, "For the entire year that the CPA has been in power in Iraq, it has been impossible to tell with any accuracy what the CPA has been doing with Iraq's money."

I guess that we shouldn't be surprised, since the Pentagon hasn't been able to produce a viable audit report for the General Accounting Office (GAO) which consistently shows the DoD with over a TRILLION dollars in untraceable entries.

Nor does the way the money has been dispersed lend itself to tracing:

From U.S. Is Quietly Spending $2.5 Billion From Iraqi Oil Revenues to Pay for Iraqi Projects "Because of deteriorating security and complex delays in contracts that have slowed the spending of the $18 billion in Congressionally appropriated money, occupation authorities say they decided recently that they had to spend the Iraqi money to build schools, factories and oil fields, and to turn Iraqis away from violence."

"The security needs were just overwhelming," said an occupation official. "Would we rather have been able to save the money and have a nice kitty? Sure. There's always a tension between putting money to work right away and having it available for a tough year next year. This is the way we resolved it."

Iraq's overall domestic budget of roughly $20 billion for 2004, financed mostly by oil revenue, was approved last year by the Program Review Board, a unit of the Coalition Provisional Authority -- the American-led occupation authority in Iraq.

But this spring, Bush administration officials said, it became clear that rising global oil prices were presenting Iraq with a windfall, and a decision had to be made about whether to save that extra money or disburse it in a one-time expenditure that might not be available in the 2005 budget.

Some of the money has gone to American military teams operating since the beginning of the occupation 14 months ago. The teams have become famous in Iraq for the way they have spread across the country, commissioning repairs and paying for them from satchels bulging with $100 bills shipped by plane from a Federal Reserve vault in East Rutherford, N.J. Much of that money came from Iraqi assets frozen in the United States during the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

At least $1 billion has been distributed in this fashion -- by some estimates more than $2 billion.

"The military commanders love that program, because it buys them friends," said an administration official, referring to the cash distribution. "

YooHoo! a "windfall!" Of course having unmonitorable access to another nation's treasury always offers the possibility of a "windfall."

Such a big deal was made of the estimated $10 million that Hussein had stashed. Well, the US certainly showed the world what chump change that was. I wonder if the checkbook was among the "papers" given to the interim government, and how much fun they will have trying to balance it.