Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (R) meets with and Iraqi Kurdistan PM (current president) Nechirvan Barzani (L) on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), Russia, June 2, 2017. Photo: Reuters
HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) spokesperson has said that the public prosecutor should launch an investigation into the revelation that Russian state oil company Rosneft paid $250 million to a consultant to secure deals in Iraqi Kurdistan Region.
Earlier in March, Bloomberg claimed in a report that the giant Russian oil company had paid the mystery consultant fee to an unknown individual so to become the dominant foreign player in the Kurdish oil industry.
“Kurdistan Regional Government Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said that the public prosecutor should launch an investigation, and called on all the parties to assist the prosecutor to reveal the truth to people,” KRG Spokesperson Jotiar Adil said on Sunday.
Rosneft is a major foreign player in Iraqi Kurdistan’s energy sector with numerous investments and holdings in extraction and infrastructure, including the Region’s oil pipeline. To company advanced the KRG approximately $3 billion in advance for future oil supplies in 2017 and 2018.
Senior KRG officials have made several trips in recent years to Russia in an effort to secure funding and investment.
The payments, which were made during 2017 and 2018 to an unnamed consultant, were revealed in the course of a routine financial disclosure by a Rosneft subsidiary earlier this year.
“From the beginning of the ninth KRG cabinet, resisting corruption and accomplishing transparency in government departments were its priorities, especially in terms of the KRG’s finance and incomes sector, and we will continue doing that,” Adil said in the statement.
The Region’s energy sector is notoriously opaque and senior government and party officials have been dogged by corruption allegations.
Despite KRG Prime Minister Barzani’s protestations to the contrary, little progress has been made to tamp down corruption during the first year of his government. For instance, no major prosecutions for corruption have taken place so far.
Iraqi Kurdistan has been split for decades between the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP)– led by the Barzani family — and its rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), headed by the Talabani clan.
For many years, transparency organizations, lawmakers, observers, and international organizations have accused senior Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government KRG officials of corruption, especially with regard to expropriation of the Kurdistan’s oil income.
Kurdistan considered as the most corrupted part of Iraq. According to Kurdish lawmakers and leaked documents billions of dollars are missing from Iraqi Kurdistan’s oil revenues.
The ruling Barzani clan have been routinely accused by critics and oberevers of neptunism and amassing huge wealth from oil business for the family instead of serving the population. KDP party leader and ex-president Massoud Barzani remains the most powerful leader in the shadow according to analysts. Massoud’s son Masrour is the Kurdistan region’s prime minister and his nephew Nechirvan Barzani is president of Kurdistan.
Also the ruling Talabani family and its allies have been routinely accused by transparency organizations and observers of corruption and amassing huge wealth from oil business in the the areas controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party.
The Kurdish government has long promised action to combat graft, but has never made much headway.
Iraq, including the Kurdistan Region, ranked 162 out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s 2019 Corruption Perceptions Index, making it one of the most deeply corrupt in the world.
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