This historic photo from May 2003 shows a U.S. soldier from the 173rd Airborne Brigade standing beside a large cache of about 1,000 roughly cast gold bars intercepted in a truck near Kirkuk, Iraq 🇮🇶
In May 2003, soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade stopped a truck at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Kirkuk, Iraq, and found 999 roughly cast gold bars piled in the truck bed, each weighing about 22 pounds (around 10 kg) and estimated to be worth between $80 million and $100 million. The driver’s documents did not match the vehicle’s registration, and when the soldiers searched further, they discovered the gold, completely out in the open, at the bottom of the dump truck.
This wasn’t an isolated find. Just two days earlier, soldiers from the same brigade had stopped another truck heading toward the Syrian border, carrying more than 1,100 similar gold bars worth over a quarter of a billion dollars along a route well known for smuggling. The men driving that truck said they had been paid $350 to take it from Baghdad to a town near the Syrian border.
With no weapons found, no resistance, and the gold left in plain sight rather than hidden, military officials were more inclined to believe the drivers’ account than the theory that armed men were involved in smuggling, although the circumstances remained genuinely suspicious given that gold is not a natural resource in Iraq. Pentagon officials said the recovered gold would be kept safe by U.S. forces until a new Iraqi government was formed and could decide what to do with it.
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In May 2003, soldiers from the 173rd Airborne Brigade stopped a truck at a checkpoint on the outskirts of Kirkuk, Iraq, and found 999 roughly cast gold bars piled in the truck bed, each weighing about 22 pounds (around 10 kg) and estimated to be worth between $80 million and $100 million. The driver’s documents did not match the vehicle’s registration, and when the soldiers searched further, they discovered the gold, completely out in the open, at the bottom of the dump truck.
This wasn’t an isolated find. Just two days earlier, soldiers from the same brigade had stopped another truck heading toward the Syrian border, carrying more than 1,100 similar gold bars worth over a quarter of a billion dollars along a route well known for smuggling. The men driving that truck said they had been paid $350 to take it from Baghdad to a town near the Syrian border.
With no weapons found, no resistance, and the gold left in plain sight rather than hidden, military officials were more inclined to believe the drivers’ account than the theory that armed men were involved in smuggling, although the circumstances remained genuinely suspicious given that gold is not a natural resource in Iraq. Pentagon officials said the recovered gold would be kept safe by U.S. forces until a new Iraqi government was formed and could decide what to do with it.
$BTC $BNB $XRP
#ETHUp70%InQ3ButLiquidityFalls
