The integrity commission, which polices corruption cases inside Iraq, released a summary of its activities in May, saying that arrest warrants and summons orders were handed to 52 high-ranking officials.
According to the data, Iraqi courts issued 168 charges against corruption cases, arresting 98 people who were caught in the act. 22 cases of escape and money smuggling outside the country were also submitted to the commission.
The body did not disclose the names of the high-ranking officials who were summoned or handed arrest warrants.
Rampant corruption plagues all levels of the Iraqi state, and official figures published last year estimated that well over 400 billion dollars have gone missing from state coffers since the regime of Saddam Hussein was overthrown in 2003.
The crisis-hit country ranks 157 out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s corruption perceptions index.
Last week, Iraq’s Integrity Commission announced that it had conducted 210 investigations on corruption cases across 15 Iraqi provinces, excluding the Kurdistan Region. Basra province lead the chart with 36 cases, followed by Anbar with 21.
In late April, Iraqi courts sentenced a former local official to six years in prison for corruption-related charges and “wasting public funds.”
An investigation by the Iraqi finance ministry in October concluded that $2.5 billion in tax funds were stolen from the General Commission of Taxes’ account at Baghdad’s Rafidain Bank between September 2021 and August 2022, during the tenure of former finance minister Ali Allawi.
The Iraqi government has repeatedly vowed to retrieve the stolen funds but has so far only retrieved a small portion of that amount despite arresting the main suspect in the case over six months ago.
