Iraq’s new PM has launched an anti-corruption campaign, but will it be enough? | | Corruption Issues

A rare anti-corruption crackdown targeting officials in Iraq has resulted in the confiscation of millions of dollars – sparking national outrage and refocusing attention on a decades-old financial crisis.

Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council on Tuesday said the amount seized in a fraud investigation linked to Oil Ministry Secretary Adnan al-Jumaili totaled nearly $86m. It said 70 items, 21 vehicles and gold jewelery weighing about three kilograms (6.6 pounds) were seized.

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Prosecutors say the money is related to losses in the work allegedly done by al-Jumaili and others related to the case.

Al-Jumaili – who was also the head of the Iraqi North Refineries Company – was arrested at his home in the town of al-Ishaqi, north of Baghdad, on May 30 as part of the investigation.

It came days after the new Prime Minister of Iraq Ali al-Zaidi ordered an investigation into contracts awarded by the government in recent years to look for evidence of corruption.

The Supreme Judicial Council added that Raed al-Jubouri, the former ambassador of Salah al-Din’s embassy – where al-Jumaili is from – was also arrested. Al-Jubouri was the director of public health at the time of his arrest.

Anti-corruption activists have complained that Iraq’s political system is built on a circular structure, with political parties and politicians using their networks and power to seize state resources.

Iraq was ranked 136 out of 182 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2025, the report shows some improvement in the fight against corruption in the country. But the report said “significant structural challenges” needed to be addressed for real change to take place, highlighting political activists’ grievances. the problem of corruption in Iraqi politics.

Al-Jumaili is the most prominent person the government has ever arrested corruption cases since Prime Minister al-Zaidi took office on May 16.

Alaa Samir al-Jubouri, the head of Iraq’s Ministry of Energy, was arrested in Baghdad in June, accused of corruption and embezzlement.

In addition, al-Zaidi canceled the $764m Baghdad International Airport development project due to corruption, saying the government was taking the matter seriously.

In one of his first decisions as prime minister, al-Zaidi established the Supreme Sovereign Council for Integrity, Oversight and Recovery of Public Funds, an organization that seeks to combat corruption in the government and procurement processes.

It will be chaired by the prime minister himself and has the responsibility of monitoring ministries, non-ministerial organizations and governments to prevent loss of public funds and restore public finances.

“The Iraqi government and the Prime Minister care corruption as one of the challenges that threaten Iraq and its political system,” Iraqi government spokesman Haider al-Aboudi said at a recent press conference.

Although the process is still in its infancy, some people are skeptical about the process and say that it is still in the old, big or difficult cases of political corruption.

“I admit that this is the first time I have seen an anti-corruption operation led by a prime minister,” Mousa Faraj, former head of the Iraqi Federal Integrity Commission, told Al Jazeera.

“But my advice to the prime minister is to start with the senior files and former officials. On top of that is the sale of Central Bank money in previous years, where the corruption reached billions of billions of dollars,” added Faraj.

On May 28, the Federal Integrity Commission announced that it had foiled an attempt to expropriate 1.5 trillion Iraqi dinars ($1.145bn) from two state-owned banks, Al-Rafidain and Al-Rasheed.

Long problem

In March 2021, Iraq’s Federal Commission of Integrity stated that $240bn had been smuggled out of the country since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, equivalent to 32 percent of Iraq’s income over the past 18 years.

The committee’s Asset Recovery Department has the potential to recover billions of government funds believed to have been lost to corruption, but achieving this could be a difficult task.

“Recovering stolen money, whether from inside or outside, is very difficult, if not impossible,” said Mohammed Raheem al-Rubie, director of the al-Nahrain Foundation for Transparency and Integrity.

“One of the reasons for this is due to the old legal system of Iraq, which (mostly) still follows the penal system of 1969. Most of these laws do not cover these types of (economic) crimes that have been committed after 2003. And if they do, they do not correspond to the size and severity of the crimes committed.”

Al-Rubie said Iraqi laws should be amended to deal with the rise in corruption that has taken place after 2003 in Iraq, although laws related to loyalty, illegal gains and gambling have been added to the country’s laws since then.

For example, some cases of corruption are punishable by up to one year in prison, even though a lot of money is being stolen, he said.

The United Nations Development Program’s 2024 report on corruption in Iraq stated that “there is an over-reliance on the rule of law that does not match the scale of the corruption involved”.

“Corruption in Iraq it is protected by politics. Therefore, it becomes a very difficult task to deal with. It is directly related to the political situation,” Ghalib Aldaamy, a professor of journalism at the university and an employee of the Integrity Commission, told Al Jazeera.

“Can you imagine that some of the people who commit such crimes believe that they are not doing anything wrong because they have a religious doctrine that states that government money is not for everyone?”