The chairman of Iraq’s Integrity Commission, Alaa Jawad al Saadi, has resigned after deploring the harassment he received amid one of the country’s biggest recent economic scandals, the theft of 2.5 billion euros in tax funds from an Iraqi bank, the so-called «theft of the century» by the national media, after deploring pressure and harassment maneuvers against his department.
«For the national responsibility placed on me and for not clinging to the office, and for not being able to continue in my position, after the defamation and projection campaigns to which our institution has been subjected, I submit a request to the Prime Minister to relieve me from office,» Al Saadi said in a statement carried by the official Iraqi news agency INA. Judge Haider Hanun Zayer will take over as interim head.
Rampant corruption plagues all levels of the Iraqi state, which ranks 157th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s corruption perception index, and official figures released last year estimate that more than 400 billion euros have disappeared from state coffers since the regime of dictator Saddam Hussein was overthrown in 2003.
The theft was announced in October by Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar, who explained that an investigation by the Finance Ministry, the portfolio he headed until his resignation this week, had revealed that «a specific group,» without giving details, had made off with 3.7 trillion (with a ‘b’) Iraqi dinars, some 2.5 billion euros, in a national tax authority fund at Rafidain bank.
The revelation of the theft led Jabbar, accused by the United States of «large-scale corruption to accept bribes for the award of oil contracts and operations in Iraq» to lose his previous post as finance minister following a motion of censure in the Iraqi parliament.
According to documents collected by the Kurdish agency Rudaw, the money was stolen through five companies from the account of the General Tax Commission by cashing 247 checks issued by the tax directorate.
The Ministry of Finance issued a lengthy statement detailing the scandal and confirming the arrest of some of the accused officials while the General Tax Commission confirmed that it had ordered the seizure of the assets of five of its senior officials involved in the case.
However, the results of the investigation are still not fully known and the money remains unaccounted for, to the indignation of the UN Special Representative for Iraq, Jeanine Hennis Plasschaert, who has called on the Iraqi authorities to recover the embezzled $2.5 billion.
«Do you know what Iraq could have done with the billions now missing? Invest in schools, hospitals, energy, water or roads,» he said on his Twitter account «Recover these funds and return them to their rightful owners. Support the government in its investigations. Ensure accountability».
