as pointed out by Andrew Sullivan:

Saddam 'took $1bn from bank'

He said the banknotes amounted to one-quarter of the Central Bank's foreign currency reserves.



It is not known if the money was the personal assets of Saddam Hussein, but the paper says the withdrawal was more than double the amount estimated to have been looted as the regime crumbled.



As Sullivan pointed out:

Saddam's "personal assets"? Like he was an entrepreneur or something. Everything that monster owned was stolen from his people. They still don't have a clue at the BBC, do they?

Dictators frequently see all of a nation's assets as their personal property. That's how "Baby Doc" could retire in comfort to France as a billionaire after looting one of the world's poorest countries. That's how Marcos, whose official salary was a few thousand dollars a year, could leave the country with millions, perhaps billions, of dollars.