Wikileaks Email Shows Man Emailing Intelligence Contractor to Ask About Iraqi Dinar, Vietnamese Dong Revaluations (RVs)
What documents has Wikileaks published relating to the rumored IQD/VND RVs? (Part 1)
A 2010 email published to Wikileaks’ “Global Intelligence Files” shows what appears to be a random man emailing an employee of a Texas-based intelligence contractor to inquire about what his firm knew or didn’t know regarding the long-rumored revaluation (”RV”), essentially a massive and instantaneous change to the foreign exchange rate of a national currency. Technically, a country can revalue its currency to either increase or decrease the value of the currency, however in this context, with these two particular countries it’s typically discussed in the context of an upward trajectory being the bullish position among speculators. This is the case even as Iraq just this past couple week devalued the Dinar relative to the US dollar.
The dinar trade on third-party sites like eBay, where users buy and sell Iraqi Dinar at generally inflated prices, is alive and as healthy as ever. At one point in July and August sellers were fetching nearly 300% of the actual exchange rate, and are still selling for much more than IQD has traditionally traded for on secondary markets, although the price has subsided a bit, largely due to a giant increase in supply after word made its way around the Dinar forums and YouTube shows about how much IQD was selling for, while demand has dipped with many investors and speculators possessing a common misconception that the 2020 Presidential election was won by the candidate who actually lost (badly). Dinar speculators have a very large faction who believe that the Iraq currency’s relative worth is to be decided in large part whether the incumbent US President remains in office. Even still, comparing the exchange rate Xe lists against the market rate as determined by the amount IQD is actually trading for againt various other currencies leaves a surprisingly wide gap that begs the question of why the market is willing to pay so much more than it (the market) is being told the high-risk, speculative investment is worth.
If we take the email Mike Whims of the now-defunct Rare Buyer LLC sent to Solomon Foshko of Stratfor, which Wikileaks described as a “global intelligence firm” headquartered in Texas, it likely has something to do with a long-rumored revaluation of one or both of Iraq and Vietnam’s currencies.
Whims in a 2010 email to “[email protected]” that ultimately made its way to Foshko, who appears to have no prior connection to Whims and whose position reads “Global Intelligence,” wrote the following:
Email subject: “STRATFOR Group Sales - Inquiry”
“Interested in foreign currency revaluations. My current interest lies
with Iraq and Vietnam. Do you have any analysis that might help
determine when a currency revaluation may occur such as what happened
with the Kuwaiti dinar?”
The message made its way to Mr. Foshko, who replied with the following:
Mr. Whims,
I have forwarded your question to our analysts. They may contact you.
I did a search of current analysis available on our site, but did not find
anything related to the Kuwaiti dinar.
Regards,
Solomon Foshko
Global Intelligence
STRATFOR
T: 512.744.4089
F: 512.473.2260
[email protected]
I reached out to both parties via email (this is New Year’s Day so I am reluctant to call until Monday) to request comment and additional information and clarification. Neither has replied as of this story being published. That said, I don’t expect either to reply on New Years Day, and will update this story with any replies should either or both respond to my inquiry.
Stratfor knew (or thought they knew) something regarding an IQD RV by 2011
Another Stratfor email exchange published to Wikileaks references a plan by the Iraqi government to remove three zeros from the currency, a plan which ultimately failed and for which the then-Iraqi government suffered heavy criticism.
Kamran Bokhari writes in an email to Stratfor analysts:
There is a plan to drop the three zeros off the current Iraqi Dinar as
part of an effort to raise its value. So if someone has the old currency
(the one printed after the fall of the Baathist regime in 2003) and turns
it in will he/she get the same amount of dinars or will they get less as
per the difference in value?
Bokhari was speaking of the plan by the Iraqi government as described by Albawaba as: “a plan to remove three zeros from the dinar, replacing current banknotes with new ones.“
The article touches upon the inherent difficulties and challenges faced by a nation the size of Iraq in a project of such a massive undertaking as a total currency revaluation.
According to Mazhar Mohammad Saleh, an expert in the Iraqi Central Bank, in a speech with the ALHAYAT of London, “our problem lies in the timing of the currency exchange, as we need to select a suitable time for implementing the project without obstacles.”
The Central Bank planned to remove three zeros from the Iraqi dinar, after suffering from inflation and the decline of the currency during the nineties, due to economic sanctions.
The following quote from the story is also noteworthy:
The most important change after deleting the zeros, is to reduce the number of banknotes in circulation, simplifying the payment system in Iraq.
In the second paragraph quoted, the article claims (accurately, IMHO) that the decline of the Iraqi Dinar is directly tied to economic sanctions stemming from Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Then in the final paragraph quoted, the article states that the most important step once “deleting the zeros” is to reduce the number of banknotes in circulation.
That last part is significant. If the United States Treasury does in fact hold untold trillions or even quadrillions of Iraqi Dinars from the initial postwar “currency swap,” and/or all of the USD auctions and USD cash pallets delivered to the Central Bank of Iraq, a number known to be at least $40 billion USD as of 2008, and that number has only increased in the 13 years since, although the US government has not revealed by how much or even how much IQD it holds period; then untold trillions could be removed from circulation just by the US exchanging their Dinars back for US Dollars and/or digital currency assets following a revaluation. Iraq could repossess those Dinars and have a giant bonfire with them, at least in theory. Then there are all of the American, Canadian, British and Australian currency speculators who hold IQD in their portfolios who would be looking to swap their suddenly valuable IQD for a currency they can use to buy and sell. While that number surely pales in comparison to the US Government’s holdings, it’s still likely nothing to scoff at, particularly in 2020 with Americans having nearly two decades of hearing about how the Iraqi Dinar would experience a rate change that would lead to windfall profits for American currency speculators. The Dinar is trading at 2.5 times its value (as defined by exchange rate) in US-based secondary marketplaces. One such marketplace where American consumers buy Iraqi Dinars is eBay. Compare those prices to the prices listed at Xe when you look up the formal exchange rate.
It’s been three decades since the economic sanctions that crippled the IQD were enacted and there seems to be a growing global consensus that it’s time to revisit the sanctions and review whether or nor they’re still appropriate and still serve a purpose that isn’t entirely punitively enacted against people, many of whom weren’t even alive when the events that provoked the enacting of the sanctions occurred.
To recap, we know that in 2011, Iraq did plan to at a bare minimum redenominate its currency. Some would argue that the 2011 plan constitutes a revaluation. Semantics aside, if the sanctions are what crashed the currency and have hindered it for three decades, if those sanctions are lifted simultaneously with a major rate change accompanied by Iraq repossessing hundreds of trillions of Dinars from citizens and countries across the globe and presumably removing them from circulation, there’s definitely an argument to be made that the concept of the “Iraq Dinar revaluation” is anything but a scam, and may not only be very real, but also very plausible despite the fact that elements within the media will tell anyone who will listen that Iraq’s situation with its currency bears no resemblance to the 1990-1991 Kuwaiti currency situation and that the same outcome is not possible in Iraq.
If it does finally happen in 2021, and there’s a lot of smoke that would seem to suggest that 2021 might be the year of the Dinar, the “Dinar Scam,” as it’s come to be known, will be remembered as all the people, publications and networks who for the better part of a decade have tried their best to convince anyone who will read or listen that investing in the Iraq Dinar is something only stupid people do, and that smart intellectuals like those in the media like to ridicule such simpletons while at their cocktail parties in their ivory towers.
It would be an end to the saga all too fitting considering that the same people calling the Dinar RV a scam are the world’s premiere pathological liars and have a proven track record of being among the most intellectually dishonest people in all of humanity.