Ahmed Chalabi

Ahmed Abdel Hadi Chalabi (Arabic: أحمد عبد الهادي الجلبي;‎ 30 October 1945 – 3 November 2015) was an Iraqi dissident politician, convicted fraudster and founder of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) who served as the President of the Governing Council of Iraq (37th Prime Minister of Iraq) and a Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq under Ibrahim al-Jaafari. He is believed to have been an Iranian agent and had ties with Iran.

Chalabi was interim Minister of Oil in Iraq in April–May 2005 and December 2005 – January 2006 and Deputy Prime Minister from May 2005 to May 2006. Chalabi failed to win a seat in parliament in the December 2005 elections, and when the new Iraqi cabinet was announced in May 2006, he was not given a post. Once dubbed the "George Washington of Iraq" by American supporters, he was initially a CIA-backed operative, who later fell out of favor, with U.S. Special Forces raiding his private residence in Baghdad only one year after the invasion of Iraq. He later came under investigation by several U.S. government agencies after switching his allegiances to become an instrument of pro-Iranian influence in Iraqi politics.

In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Iraqi National Congress (INC), with the assistance of lobbying powerhouse BKSH & Associates, provided a major portion of the information on which the Office of Special Plans based its condemnation of the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, including reports of weapons of mass destruction and alleged ties to al-Qaeda. Most, if not all, of this information has turned out to be false and Chalabi has been called a fabricator. Along with this, Chalabi also subsequently boasted, in an interview with the British Sunday Telegraph, about the impact that their faulty intelligence had on American policy. These factors led to a falling-out between him and the U.S. government. Furthermore, Chalabi was found guilty of bank fraud in the Petra Bank scandal in Jordan and he was sentenced to 22 years imprisonment in absentia.

In 2008, Office for Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance Director Jay Garner stated that he believed Chalabi was an Iranian agent. In January 2012, a French intelligence official stated that he believed Chalabi to be "acting on behalf of Iran".