Saddam Hussein

Country: Iraq
Ruled: 1979-2003
Deposed: Invasion
Exiled: Executed in Iraq
Wealth: $7 billion – $40 billion

The mother of all dictators, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein gassed, tortured and killed thousands of political opponents in his 24-year reign of terror. Once regarded as a bastion against Communism and the mullahs, Saddam came to be seen as a danger to the West and Israel, a sponsor of Islamic terrorism and a potential nuclear threat—although his Weapons of Mass Destruction were a fiction. In 2003, Iraq was invaded by the US-led Coalition of the Willing in the second Gulf War and Saddam was toppled. He was later captured and executed. Estimates of his stolen fortune range from $7 billion to $40 billion, of which some $3 billion was quickly recovered from his palaces in Iraq and banks in Lebanon. But that still leaves plenty unaccounted for.