{"id":7517,"date":"2026-06-26T16:35:47","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T16:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2026\/06\/26\/iraqs-new-pm-launches-anticorruption-campaign-but-is-it-enough\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T16:35:47","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T16:35:47","slug":"iraqs-new-pm-launches-anticorruption-campaign-but-is-it-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2026\/06\/26\/iraqs-new-pm-launches-anticorruption-campaign-but-is-it-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraq\u2019s new PM launches anticorruption campaign, but is it enough?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div aria-live=\"polite\" aria-atomic=\"true\">\n<p>An unusual wave of anticorruption arrests targeting senior officials in Iraq has resulted in the seizure of tens of millions of dollars \u2013 rousing public opinion across the country and bringing renewed attention to the decades-long problem of financial corruption.<\/p>\n<p>The Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council on Tuesday said cash seized in an investigation into alleged corruption linked to detained Oil Ministry Undersecretary for Refining Affairs Adnan al-Jumaili had risen to about $86m. It added that 70 properties, 21 vehicles and about three kilogrammes (6.6 pounds) of gold jewellery had been seized.<\/p>\n<section>\n<h2>Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n<p><span>list of 3 items<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span>list 1 of 3<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/economy\/2026\/6\/22\/former-us-federal-reserve-chairman-alan-greenspan-dies-at-age-100\">Former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan dies at age 100<\/a><\/li>\n<li><span>list 2 of 3<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2026\/6\/24\/us-senate-approves-iran-war-powers-resolution-what-that-means-for-trump\">US Senate approves Iran war powers resolution: What that means for Trump<\/a><\/li>\n<li><span>list 3 of 3<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/sports\/2026\/6\/23\/iraq-fans-proud-and-joyful-despite-world-cup-loss-to-france\">\u2018Living the dream\u2019: Iraqis proud of team despite World Cup loss to France<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n<p>The judiciary said the funds were linked to waste in projects said to be carried out by al-Jumaili and others linked to the case.<\/p>\n<p>Al-Jumaili \u2013 who was also the head of the Iraqi North Refineries Company \u2013 was arrested at his home in the town of al-Ishaqi, north of Baghdad, on May 30 as part of the probe.<\/p>\n<p>It came days after the new Iraqi Prime Minister <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2026\/4\/28\/who-is-ali-al-zaidi-the-businessman-named-as-iraqs-pm-designate\">Ali al-Zaidi<\/a> ordered the investigation of contracts issued by the government in recent years to look for evidence of corruption.<\/p>\n<p>The Supreme Judicial Council added that Raed al-Jubouri, the former governor of Salah al-Din governorate \u2013 where al-Jumaili is from \u2013 was also arrested. Al-Jubouri was the director of health in the governorate at the time of his arrest.<\/p>\n<p>Anticorruption activists have complained that Iraq\u2019s political structure is built around graft, with parties and politicians using their patronage networks and powers to plunder state resources.<\/p>\n<p>Iraq was placed 136 out of 182 countries in Transparency International\u2019s Corruption Perceptions Index for 2025, with the report noting some improvements in the country\u2019s fight against corruption. But the report did say that \u201csignificant structural hurdles\u201d need to be overcome for the situation to dramatically improve, highlighting activists\u2019 complaints about the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/opinions\/2015\/8\/11\/endless-battle-fighting-systemic-corruption-in-iraq\">problem of systemic corruption in Iraq\u2019s political system<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Al-Jumaili is the most high-profile government figure to be arrested on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/economy\/2021\/2\/26\/decades-after-the-gulf-war-iraqs-youth-view-oil-as-a-curse\">corruption<\/a> charges since Prime Minister al-Zaidi took office on May 16.<\/p>\n<p>Alaa Samir al-Jubouri, a leading official in the Iraqi Ministry of Electricity, was arrested in Baghdad in June, accused of corruption and wasting public funds.<\/p>\n<p>Further, al-Zaidi cancelled the $764m Baghdad international airport development project due to suspected corruption, hinting that the government is taking the issue more seriously.<\/p>\n<p>In one of his first decisions as prime minister, al-Zaidi established the Supreme Sovereign Council for Integrity, Oversight and Recovery of Public Funds, a body intended to tackle the problem of corruption in the public sector and procurement processes.<\/p>\n<p>It will be presided over by the prime minister himself and is responsible for monitoring ministries, non-ministerial entities and governorates to prevent the waste of public funds and recover state assets.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Iraqi government and the prime minister regard <a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2024\/3\/28\/iraqs-overreliance-on-oil-threatens-economic-political-strife\">corruption<\/a> as one of the gravest challenges threatening the Iraqi state and its political order,\u201d Iraqi government spokesman Haider al-Aboudi said in a recent news conference.<\/p>\n<p>Although this process is still in its early stages, some observers are sceptical about the process and say it has yet to address older, more significant or politically sensitive cases of alleged corruption.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI admit that this is the first time I have seen a collective anticorruption effort headed by the prime minister,\u201d Mousa Faraj, former head of the Iraqi Federal Integrity Commission, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut my advice to the prime minister is to start with serious and major old files. At the top of them are the Central Bank currency auctions in previous years, where corruption reached tens of billions of dollars,\u201d Faraj added.<\/p>\n<p>On May 28, the Federal Integrity Commission announced it had foiled an alleged attempt to seize 1.5 trillion Iraqi dinars ($1.145bn) from two state-owned banks, Al-Rafidain and Al-Rasheed.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Longstanding problem<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In March 2021, Iraq\u2019s Federal Commission of Integrity estimated that $240bn had been smuggled out of the country since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, equivalent to 32 percent of Iraq\u2019s revenues over that 18-year period.<\/p>\n<p>The commission\u2019s Asset Recovery Department has the potential to claw back the billions of dollars of state funds believed lost to corruption, but achieving this would be a difficult task.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRestoring the stolen funds, whether from inside the country or abroad, is a very difficult process, if not impossible,\u201d said Mohammed Raheem al-Rubie, the head of the al-Nahrain Foundation for Transparency and Integrity.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne of the reasons for this is because of the outdated Iraqi legal system, which still [predominantly] follows the 1969 penal code. Most of the laws of this code do not cover these types of [financial] crimes that have been committed after 2003. And if they do, they are not commensurate with the scale and seriousness of the crimes committed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Al-Rubie said Iraq\u2019s legal code needed to be updated to deal with the scale of post-2003 corruption in Iraq, although laws on integrity, illicit gains and money laundering have been added to the country\u2019s legal code since.<\/p>\n<p>For example, some corruption crimes are only punishable with one year in prison, despite huge sums being embezzled, he said.<\/p>\n<p>A 2024 United Nations Development Programme report on corruption in Iraq said that there was a \u201ccontinued reliance on broad legal frameworks that may not fully match the gravity of the corruption involved\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/economy\/2020\/6\/10\/rampant-corruption-scorches-iraqs-grain-farmers\">Corruption in Iraq<\/a> is politically protected. Thus, it becomes a very complicated task to fight it. It is linked directly to the nature and the composition of the political system,\u201d Ghalib Aldaamy, a university media professor and ex-employee in the Integrity Commission, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCan you imagine that some of those who commit such crimes believe they are not doing something wrong because they hold a religious doctrine that states that public funds belong to no one?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An unusual wave of anticorruption arrests targeting senior officials in Iraq has resulted in the seizure of tens of millions of dollars \u2013 rousing public opinion across the country and bringing renewed attention to the decades-long problem of financial corruption. The Iraqi Supreme Judicial Council on Tuesday said cash seized in an investigation into alleged &#8230; <a title=\"Iraq\u2019s new PM launches anticorruption campaign, but is it enough?\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2026\/06\/26\/iraqs-new-pm-launches-anticorruption-campaign-but-is-it-enough\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about Iraq\u2019s new PM launches anticorruption campaign, but is it enough?\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}