ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Iraqi President Barham Salih on Sunday announced a draft bill to combat corruption and recover an estimated $150 billion that has been taken out of the country since 2003.
The draft law “includes practical measures to deter corruption as well as methods to recover already stolen funds,” providing tool to strengthen Iraq’s legal and supervisory institutions, Salih said in a statement.
Iraq ranks among the most corrupt nations in the world, coming 160 out of 180 nations assessed by Transparency International in their annual report.
The government has worked to combat corruption and recovered a billion dollars in 2020. But corruption is deeply entrenched in the networks of power that have been fostered since 2003 and the government is “unable” to root it out, Rebwar Karim, member of the parliament’s finance committee, said last month.
The president’s bill will also seek to take Baghdad’s efforts to combat corruption beyond Iraq’s borders.
“Corruption in Iraq does not stop at our borders. Huge sums of money, estimated in the billions, have illegally exited the country. Of the nearly a trillion dollars made from oil since 2003, an estimated $150 billion of stolen money has been smuggled out of Iraq,” Salih said.
“This illegal money was enough to put the country in a better condition,” he added.
Salih said that, because corruption extends beyond Iraq’s borders, combatting it cannot be limited to domestic efforts. The law he has drafted “seeks to recover these funds by concluding agreements with countries, strengthening cooperation with specialized international organizations and bodies, and benefiting from successful global experiences to curb this phenomenon,” he said.
He called for the establishment of an international coalition to combat corruption, along the same lines as the military alliance fighting the Islamic State group (ISIS), saying “corruption and terrorism are interconnected, intertwined, and perpetuate each other.”
