Report: Sudanese leader has $9B stash

LONDON, Dec. 18 (UPI) -- Allegations were disclosed Saturday that President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan has a secret bank account worth $9 billion, skimmed from the national treasury.

The information was contained in leaked U.S. diplomatic exchanges with Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, released by the whistle-blower Web site WikiLeaks, The Guardian newspaper reported.

"Ocampo reported Lloyds Bank in London may be holding or knowledgeable of the whereabouts of his money," one of the cables from March 2009 said.

However, Lloyds Banking Group denied it had any connection to Bashir.

Dr. Khalid al-Mubarak, government spokesman at the Sudanese Embassy in London, told the newspaper the allegations were unfounded.

"To claim that the president can control the treasury and take money to put into his own accounts is ludicrous -- it is a laughable claim by the ICC prosecutor," he said.

Ocampo has led the case against Bashir, issuing an arrest warrant last year for him for seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the bloody ethnic conflict in Darfur. It's unlikely Bashir's government will turn him over to face trial, the report said.

Despite the violence and poverty in Sudan, the country has oilfields and supplies China and France with oil.