ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Iraqi Commission on Integrity announced on Thursday the arrest of a ranking government official and his assistant in Diyala province's disputed city of Khanaqin on charges of misappropriating public funds.
Over the years, widespread institutional corruption has squandered billions of dollars from the wealth of Iraq, the annual revenue of which has already suffered greatly due to declining oil prices. This has put considerable strain on the national budget even as spending increased to fund the war against the so-called Islamic State which began in 2014.
The commission said in a statement that its teams in Diyala “were able to arrest the defendants, the head of the Khanaqin Agriculture Directorate and his assistant, for committing a number of violations, including registering an agricultural contract for a 50-dunum (538,196 square feet) area of ??land in the name of the brother of the second defendant, contrary to the regulations.”
The violations also included, according to the statement, “renewing a 10-dunum (107,639 square feet) agricultural land contract belonging to the deceased father of one of the defendants and transferring the contract in the name of the defendant.”
The commission added that the violations included the second defendant, in cooperation with his brother who works as a surveyor, to fraudulently change the description of agricultural land to mountainous land located outside the boundaries of the municipality to facilitate the granting of permission to establish a factory on it.
The defendants also “covered up a complaint addressed to the governor of Diyala regarding charges of stealing agricultural pesticides, fertilizers, and seeds attributed to employees of the Khanaqin Agricultural Directorate, as well as other violations that led to a loss of public money.”
The statement added that the arrest came based on the provisions of Article 340 of the Iraqi Penal Code.
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Successive Iraqi federal governments have been either unwilling or unable able to curb rampant corruption over the past decade and a half. The current administration, which ran on a reformist platform, continues to struggle to address the widespread mismanagement of public funds while facing strong resistance from within its own institutions.
Iraq has one of the world’s largest oil reserves and is the second-largest oil producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). However, its citizens suffer from extreme poverty and high unemployment rates.
The embattled Middle Eastern nation continues to rank high on Transparency International’s list for corruption, fraud, and mismanagement of state institutions, some of the most significant challenges facing the country since the fall of the former regime in 2003.
According to the organization’s 2018 Corruption Index, Iraq ranks 168th, the 12th most corrupt country out of a total of 180.
Editing by John J. Catherine