ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq's top anti-corruption court has sentenced the former head of the country's tax commission to ten years in prison and his wife to five, convicting the pair of money laundering and illegal acquisition of public funds, Baghdad's judiciary announced on Wednesday, as the anti-corruption campaign launched by Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi over the weekend continues to gain ground.
"The Central Anti-Corruption Criminal Court handed down a ten-year prison sentence against the former director-general of the General Commission for Taxes, and a prison sentence of five years and one month against his wife, an employee at a private bank in Baghdad, for the crime of money laundering," Iraq's Supreme Judicial Council said in a statement.
The Council - the highest judicial authority for the country's ordinary court system - added that "the convicts unlawfully possessed and acquired funds and used them to purchase real estate," noting that the rulings against them were issued in accordance with the country's "Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Laws" as well as pursuant to the Iraqi Penal Code.
The rulings are part of Operation Dawn, an expanded anti-corruption campaign launched under Iraqi Prime Minister Zaidi's orders on Sunday in coordination with Iraq's Federal Commission of Integrity, which has so far netted tens of senior politicians and officials and tens of millions of dollars in stolen public funds, as well as the recovery of dozens of state properties since its debut.
The Commission on Tuesday had also issued a statement on the case of former taxation chief Osama Hussam Jawdat and his wife, detailing that the ruling against them entails “a fine of more than 32 billion dinars [around $25 million] … the confiscation of funds deposited in Turkish and Kuwaiti banks,” and “the confiscation of 22 real estate properties in Baghdad and Turkey registered in the convict's name, along with their rental income and her gold jewelry.”
The case of Jawdat comes a day after Iraqi authorities on Tuesday recovered roughly 19 billion Iraqi dinars (about $14.5 million) in a case involving embezzled funds from the national carrier Iraqi Airways, Baghdad's judiciary announced.
The investigative court in Baghdad's Rusafa district “recovered 19 billion Iraqi dinars on Tuesday,” the Supreme Judicial Council said in a statement, adding that “the sum was recovered as part of investigations into a financial corruption case involving tampering with deposit records of funds belonging to Iraqi Airways.”
A day earlier the Council said large sums of state funds and several properties were seized in a case involving the deputy minister of oil for distribution affairs, Ali Maarij al-Bahadly, who was sanctioned by the United States in May.
Iraq ranked 136th out of 182 countries in Transparency International's 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), scoring 28 out of 100, reflecting a high level of public-sector corruption by global standards.
Manuel Pirino, the organization's regional advisor for the Middle East and North Africa, on Tuesday lauded the anti-corruption crackdown. He told Rudaw however that “it is still a bit early to say if it is a successful operation,” explaining that around 20 percent of the country's public funds "have been lost to corruption," while "between $150 billion and $450 billion in assets may have been moved overseas or hidden within Iraq."
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