ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s integrity commission has called for the parliament to hold a session on the massive theft of $2.5 billion from the country’s tax coffers, dubbed the “Heist of the Century,” saying the credibility of his commission is at stake.
“I want the Iraqi parliament to host me and ask me about the Heist of the Century, and after hosting me in the Iraqi parliament, I will either be confirmed or dismissed,” Judge Haider Hanoun, head of Iraq’s integrity commission, said in a presser in Erbil on Wednesday.
An investigation by the Iraqi finance ministry in October 2022 concluded that over $2.5 billion (3.7 trillion dinars) in tax funds were stolen from a bank by five companies during the tenure of former Finance Minister Ali Allawi.
The primary suspect in the heist, businessman Noor Zuhair Jassim, was due to appear in court in mid-August but did not show up. There are conflicting reports that he was involved in a traffic accident in Lebanon. The court has granted Jassim’s bail bondsmen until Monday to bring him to court.
“The credibility of the integrity commission is at stake,” Hanoun stated, adding that he is announcing “the beginning of the real battle against corruption.”
“We do not accept covering up the theft of tax deposits,” he stressed. “Why were they detained for two years and not tried?”
Hanoun also revealed other crimes of Jassim, including stealing 720 dunams of land belonging to the finance ministry in Basra’s Shatt al-Arab area and “registering it in the names of fictitious people with forged documents.”
Another arrest warrant was issued on Tuesday for Haitham al-Jabouri, the former head of the parliamentary finance committee. Jabouri was arrested for his involvement in the case in November 2022 but was released on bail in early 2023.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani said in November 2022 that Jassim admitted to embezzling a sum of 1.618 trillion dinars (over $1.1 billion).
The government has recovered some of the funds, but the majority remains missing.
Rampant corruption plagues all levels of the Iraqi state. The country ranks as the joint tenth most corrupt nation in the world, according to Transparency International’s annual corruption index.