ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – A group of French experts came to the Kurdistan Region on Tuesday to help in budgeting and auditing matters following a meeting between Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Deputy Prime Minister Qubad Talabani and a French Finance Ministry delegation in Erbil.
“The French government is expected to send some of its experts to advice the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in budgeting and expense auditing matters in the Kurdistan Region in the next two months,” a statement from the KRG read.
They are also due to “train government employees, help in amending old laws, and developing agriculture and tourism sectors,” the statement added.
The areas the KRG primarily needs help with are “auditing” and the “classic model of budgeting that is complex and cumbersome making it difficult to monitor corruption,” Rewaz Fayeq, the head of finance and economic affairs committee in the KRG parliament, told Rudaw English.
Fayeq stressed the KRG needs a modern model of budgeting that is “more transparent, honest and detailed in order to be able to prevent corruption.”
The KRG Integrity Commission has already started to crack down on corruption cases, but is facing difficulties due to the lack of sufficient prosecutors and laws that provide immunity to some officials involved in corruption. Last year, the Integrity Commission submitted 198 corruption cases to courts, but only 33 of them have been concluded – 16 in Duhok, 15 in Erbil, and two in Sulaimani.
“The problem is the lack of a special court to deal with corruption cases,” Ahmad Anwar, the head of Integrity Commission, said at the time. They have submitted many cases to court and, two years on, hearing dates still have not been set for some of them, he said.
The commission also outlined another problem – the abundance of immunity in the upper echelons of power that is preventing investigations into those accused of corruption. Many syndicates have immunity, meaning their members can appear before a court only if the syndicate gives its permission.
“In many offices, when one of their members is accused of corruption, he should take permission from his boss [to be able to appear before the court]. Some syndicates have fixed this in their laws. And this has created problems because having immunity or having to take permission from your boss prevents investigations,” Anwar addded.
The Integrity Commission has estimated that nearly 298.5 billion dinars ($250 million) is wrapped up in the corruption cases. They have so far recuperated almost 5.4 billion dinars ($4.5 million), mostly in Sulaimani province.
The lawmaker also said the KRG needs to “adjust its old central rules to the free open market in the Kurdistan Region” in order to attract more investors to the Region who often complain of unnecessary bureaucracy.
Fayeq said she couldn’t comment on today’s KRG meeting with the French Finance Ministry’s Department of International Aid, but said the KRG mainly needs training in areas of “auditing, monitoring, budgeting, and planning,” adding it appears France is the country that is prepared to do this at this time.
Talabani was the list leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan’s (PUK) campaign in the Iraqi and Kurdistan Region parliamentary elections last year. Campaigning on an anti-corruption platform, Talabani and the PUK did well — re-establishing itself as the second-largest Kurdistani party.
The deputy PM has spearheaded governmental transparency and reform initiatives in Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani’s government.
"The decentralization of power has to be the priority of the next government and there should be a strong monitoring on the decentralized powers so as to know how they are managed," Talabani said at a forum in October 2018.
Prior to the elections, Talabani and US officials revealed the Iraqi Governance Performance and Accountability program to help the KRG and Iraq meet the needs of its people through better governance and delivery of services in March 2018.
