In the spring of 2003 the Central Bank of Iraq almost ceased to exist. In the days following the fall of Baghdad on April 9, its offices and their records were ransacked and the main building was reduced to ashes. A gang of looters tried - unsuccessfully - to blow up the main safe doors. Some of the central bank's vaults, which are in the central bank compound on the banks of the Tigris in central Baghdad, were flooded. The central bank's printing works were attacked and the printing plates and