Chalabi, Ahmed Abdel Hadi (1944– )

Iraqi industrialist and politician. A Shia Muslim from a wealthy banking family that left Iraq in 1956, he founded the Iraqi National Congress (INC) in 1992 to oppose Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, and attempted unsuccessfully in 1995–96 to organize an uprising in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Chalabi developed close connections with neo-conservatives in the USA – the INC received funding of US$27 million from the US Department of Defense 1999–2003 and provided intelligence on Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction programmes in the run-up to the 2003 US-led Iraq War. However, much of the intelligence later proved to be inaccurate.

Chalabi returned to Iraq soon after Hussein's overthrow by US forces. A secular, pro-Western Shia, he was seen as the US administration's favoured candidate to govern Iraq, but he lacked grassroots support. In May 2004, the USA effectively withdrew support and his home in Baghdad, Iraq, was raided by US forces and Iraqi police.

The son of a wealthy Baghdad banking family, Chalabi's grandfather, father and brother held important posts in pre-Hussein governments. He gained a doctorate in mathematics at the University of Chicago, Illinois, and was mathematics professor at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, before setting up the Petra bank in Jordan in 1977. This collapsed in 1990, and two years later a Jordanian court sentenced him in absentia to 22 years imprisonment. He escaped punishment by moving to the UK, where he lived in exile and was granted citizenship.