---
alias:
- SerVaas Incorporated
- Servaas Inc.
- SerVaas
category: Private Organization
created: 2026-09-21
location: Indianapolis, Indiana
summary: Indianapolis company that sold Iraq a 40 million dollar brass recycling plant
  financed by BNL Atlanta, which its owner told Congress was for commercial products
  and Iraqi documents assigned to cartridge cases and artillery fuses.
tags:
- Organization
- SerVaas
- Iraq
- BNLScandal
- SafaAlHabobi
- ArmsToIraq
- Indianapolis
- HenryGonzalez
updated: 2026-09-21
---

SerVaas Incorporated is an Indianapolis manufacturing company owned by Beurt SerVaas. In September 1988 it signed a contract with an [Iraqi](/places/iraq/) state enterprise, Al Shaheed, for a plant to recover brass from spent shell casings. The contract, worth 40 million dollars, was financed by the Atlanta branch of the [Banca Nazionale del Lavoro](/organizations/banca-nazionale-del-lavoro/), and a further agreement of June 14, 1989, was made with the procurement network of [Safa al-Habobi](/people/safa-al-habobi/).[^1]

SerVaas told the House Banking Committee on April 9, 1991: "It was explained to us that Iraq was looking to a long-term project of utilizing this substantial amount of scrap for the purpose of supplementing its oil revenues through the sale of commercial products in the peacetime economy." The committee's chairman, [Henry B. Gonzalez](/people/henry-b-gonzalez/), read into the record on September 25, 1992, an internal memorandum of July 31, 1988, and documents of [Matrix Churchill](/organizations/matrix-churchill/), showing that the 70/30 brass was to double Iraq's output of the discs from which cartridge cases are drawn and to supply parts for artillery fuses, with commercial sales a residue. SerVaas told the Indianapolis Star on August 8, 1992: "Probably the only thing they are doing is melting the brass down."[^1]

All the equipment had been shipped when Iraq invaded [Kuwait](/places/kuwait/) in August 1990, though the plant was not yet running. Gonzalez said SerVaas afterward renegotiated with al-Habobi and Saalim Naman and sold the contract through a foreign holding company, Izane, so as to escape the president's order freezing Iraqi assets. President [George H.W. Bush](/people/george-hw-bush/)'s report to Congress of September 1991 under the Iraq Sanctions Act stated that "[United States](/places/united-states/) suppliers did not contribute directly to Iraq's conventional or nonconventional weapons capability."[^1]

[^1]: Gonzalez, Henry B. "Brass Factory in Iraq," *Congressional Record,* House, September 25, 1992, p. H9502; Gonzalez, floor statement of August 10, 1992.