---
alias:
- Safa Haji al-Habobi
- Safa Al-Habobi
- Dr. Safa al-Habobi
category: Intelligence & Government
created: 2026-09-21
location: Baghdad, Iraq
summary: Iraqi official who ran the London front companies of Hussein Kamel's military
  industry ministry, chaired Matrix Churchill, was indicted in Atlanta in 1991 with
  Christopher Drogoul, and was named Iraq's oil minister in 1993.
tags:
- Person
- SafaAlHabobi
- Iraq
- MatrixChurchill
- TechnologyDevelopmentGroup
- BNLScandal
- HusseinKamel
- ArmsToIraq
updated: 2026-09-21
---

Safa Haji al-Habobi was the director general of one of the weapons plants of [Iraq](/places/iraq/)'s Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization, the Nassr State Enterprise, and "a director at several Iraqi front companies, including TDG and the British and U.S. branches of [Matrix Churchill](/organizations/matrix-churchill/)." Representative [Henry B. Gonzalez](/people/henry-b-gonzalez/) described the ministry's buying organization, the Al-Arabi Trading Company of [Baghdad](/places/baghdad/), as nominally private and in fact run from day to day by al-Habobi, "one of [Hussein Kamil](/people/hussein-kamel/)'s former Secret Security Organization cronies." Its [London](/places/london/) holding company, the Technology Development Group, bought Matrix Churchill in 1987, and its [Paris](/places/paris/) arm, Babil International, was listed in his name.[^1][^2]

On June 14, 1989, his network contracted with [SerVaas Inc.](/organizations/servaas-inc/) of Indianapolis for a brass recovery plant, financed like its other American purchases by the Atlanta branch of the [Banca Nazionale del Lavoro](/organizations/banca-nazionale-del-lavoro/). The indictment returned in Atlanta on February 28, 1991, against the branch manager, [Christopher Drogoul](/people/christopher-drogoul/), named al-Habobi as a defendant with Sadik Taha and Abdul Munim Rasheed of the Central Bank of Iraq and Raja Hassan Ali of the ministry.[^1][^2]

Al-Habobi told Paul Henderson, the managing director of Matrix Churchill, who was reporting to British intelligence, "not only that [Rome](/places/rome/) was fully aware of the Atlanta loans but that these were an extension of a government-to-government agreement between [Italy](/places/italy/) and Iraq." [Saddam Hussein](/people/saddam-hussein/) named him oil minister in the summer of 1993.[^1]

[^1]: Friedman, Alan. *Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq*. Bantam, 1993, pp. 185, 281.
[^2]: Gonzalez, Henry B. Floor statements of August 10 and September 25, 1992, *Congressional Record,* House; United States v. Drogoul, No. 1:91-CR-078 (N.D. Ga.), indictment.