Chalabi has always maintained that his conviction for fraud was the result of a "plot"

AMMAN, August 17 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A group of 21 Jordanian MPs are to call on Washington to extradite Ahmad Chalabi, a key U.S.-ally on the Iraqi Governing Council, to serve out a 22-year prison sentence for fraud, Amman press reports said Sunday, August 17.

In a public motion, 21 MPs called for an extraordinary session of parliament to discuss Chalabi's involvement in financial irregularities and his extradition to Jordan via Interpol in order to serve his sentence, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

Chalabi, leader of the U.S. picked Iraqi National Congress, a pro-Western anti-Saddam Hussein faction which provided troops for the U.S.-led war, built and lost a banking empire in Jordan in the 1980s.

After he fled the country in 1989, he was convicted in absentia of fraud and embezzling 288 million dollars from Petra into Swiss bank accounts.

Jordanian MPs now want him to face a second trial, on additional charges of defrauding the central bank and Petra clients of 900 million dollars.

The Jordanian press said MPs were ready to send a letter to the U.S. administration and congress, calling for his extradition to Amman to serve his sentence and face the new trial.

"We are collecting more signatures in the coming days and we will ask the government to send a request to the U.S. administration to extradite Chalabi to Jordan via Interpol," MP Mahmud Kharabcheh was quoted as saying.

Kharabcheh said an extraordinary session of parliament will debate "the real causes of (Petra's) collapse and the role played by Mr Chalabi," the reports added.

Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Moasher has also accused Chalabi of financial irregularities in Switzerland and Lebanon.

Chalabi has always maintained that his conviction for fraud was the result of a "plot" by Baghdad to frame him.

The Sunday Herald profiled Ahmad Al-Chalabi on September 24, saying he came to the limelight in 1989 when he fled to London from Jordan amid accusations that he had embezzled millions from the bank he owned.

The collapse of the Petra Bank left thousands of its clients in poverty. A former math professor, Al-Chalabi did not attend his trial in Jordan and was sentenced in absentia to 32 years in prison – a sentence that can only be carried out if he returns to Jordan.

In 1999, Al-Chalabi was officially demoted to become a member of the INC’s executive council rather than its leader, but he is still spoken of by INC officials as the future president of Iraq.

This is despite the fact that the U.S. State Department recently found that about $2 million of the $4 million it had given to the INC was not properly accounted for.

Lebanon Connection

What is less well known is that at the same time another bank, run by Chalabi's brother, Jawad, was going under in Lebanon, BBC News Online said.

Ahmed Chalabi, it is important to note, had no management role in Mebco, as the bank was called.

"As far as I know, Dr Chalabi has never been involved in (Mebco)," Haider Ahmed, the INC's spokesman in London, told BBC.

But according to Mohammed Said Nabulsi, then-governor of Jordan's Central Bank, Arthur Andersen's investigation indicated that Petra assets were being used to keep Mebco afloat, and vice versa.

Then a run on Mebco's finances brought the bank to its knees, a situation associates of Chalabi say was engineered for political reasons.

Coming at the same time as the liquidity crunch in Jordan and the crackdown on foreign exchange dealings, the stress was apparently too much for the Chalabi family's financial empire.

"It's probable that the trouble at Petra had an effect at Mebco, but I can't be certain," said the INC's Haider Ahmed.

The Jordanian Central Bank went to the Banque du Liban (Lebanon's central bank) for restitution, given that Petra assets were reported as being in Mebco's hands.

"But they ended up asking us to repay them, " Nabulsi said. "It was the same with Switzerland."

The result: Mebco was liquidated by the Lebanese authorities in 1989, just as its Swiss branch's license was being taken away by the Swiss authorities for lax accounting and poor liquidity.

That effectively shut it down as well, leaving Jawad and a third brother, Hazem, facing six-month suspended sentences in Switzerland. Another family investment vehicle, Socofi, was also closed down by the Swiss authorities.

In Lebanon, the case never made it to the criminal courts.