Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al Sudani announced Sunday the recovery of a second block of embezzled funds linked to what Iraqi authorities have described as ‘the theft of the century’.
Al Sudani’s office said in a statement on its website that «integrity authorities continue to recover stolen money from the tax fund,» an operation carried out «under close supervision of the prime minister and in cooperation with the Supreme Judicial Council.»
«As promised by the prime minister in his statements on November 27, a second part of the stolen money has been recovered,» he said, before detailing that the sum amounts to more than 134 billion Iraqi dinars (about 87.2 million euros) that have been deposited in an account at Rafidain Bank.
This brings the recovered funds to more than 317 billion dinars (about 206.3 million euros). «Efforts to recover the stolen money and pursue the wanted persons continue under the direct supervision of the prime minister, in line with the government program, which places the fight against corruption as its top priority,» he reiterated.
The theft of funds was announced in October by Oil Minister Ihsan Abdulyabar, 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 Iraqi dinars (about 2.5 billion euros) in a national tax authority fund at Rafidain Bank.
Following this, 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.
Rafidain Bank, Iraq’s largest bank, with 165 branches inside Iraq and offices in Cairo, Beirut, or Abu Dhabi, has assured that it has nothing to do with the theft of this amount, collected between September 2021 and August 2022, during Ali Allawi’s tenure as the country’s finance minister.
