Iraq’s parliamentary integrity committee announced that about $240 billion have been smuggled outside the country since 2003.
Committee member Taha al-Difai indicated that the government formed an anti-corruption committee which came under political pressure, affecting its performance.
Difai told the state-owned Iraqi News Agency on Monday that he hopes the committee will be able to continue its work and investigate major cases such as corruption in ministries.
“Around IQD1,000 trillion ($685 billion) have been disbursed since 2003,” he said, adding that they include the budgets of the operational and investment ministries.
Difai pointed out that this amount was “wasted in contracting and rampant corruption,” noting that the committee concluded that the majority of projects in Baghdad or the provinces were assigned to incompetent companies.
The works were not completed and money was used for small projects rather than establishing strategic projects as main roads and highways, he indicated.
“The amount [$240 billion] was smuggled in the form of fake receipts and commissions were paid to officials,” pointed out Difai.
Earlier, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi pledged that 2021 will be the year of uncovering major truths about corruption.
Kadhimi said the government is determined to fight corruption this year, despite the pressures from various figures and parties against the measures taken by the special anti-corruption committee.
Meanwhile, Masoud Haidar, an advisor to Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani, accused Shiite parties of stealing more than $1 trillion from Iraq.
Haidar indicated that Shiite parties do not have any plans to serve Iraq and are not capable of governing the state.
Over the past years, Baghdad and Erbil have been locked in a series of disputes, most recently the oil crisis in exchange for the salaries of the region's state employees, which remains unsolved since 2015.
