Iraqi authorities discovered bags containing damaged banknotes in the vault of the Central Bank in Mosul yesterday, where the ISIS organization had seized millions of dollars. Inside the large, destroyed building, which still has a charred roof, workers pulled several black plastic bags filled with bundles of dinar banknotes from a pit in the ground.
Hussein Al-Zaydi, the director of the Central Bank's Mosul branch, stated that "during the liberation operations, the Central Bank building was hit by an airstrike." He said, "After the beginning of the rehabilitation efforts and debris removal, we managed to enter the vault and discovered that there was currency inside the bags in small denominations. The currency was severely damaged due to flooding in the vaults from groundwater as a result of the airstrike" during the offensive to reclaim Mosul.
He noted that around 175 bags have been found so far, without specifying the exact amount. During ISIS's control of Mosul in the summer of 2014, hundreds of millions of dollars and gold bullion stored in the vaults of the Central Bank branch in Mosul fell into the hands of the terrorists. By the end of 2017, Iraq declared victory over the terrorists, who were then defeated in Syria in 2019.
