UK sanctions imprisoned ex-Nineveh governor as part of global graft crackdown

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The British government on Thursday said that it sanctioned the former governor of Nineveh province along with four other people accused of profiting from mass corruption.

Nawfal Hammadi Al-Sultan, the former governor of Nineveh province, was sanctioned for misappropriating “public funds intended for reconstruction efforts and to provide support for civilians,” the UK Foreign Office said. 

Sultan was convicted of corruption for running fake rehabilitation schemes and improperly awarding public contracts that the Foreign Office said were worth more than £2.5 million (5 billion Iraqi dinars).

The sanctions freeze any of Sultan’s assets in the UK and impose a travel ban on him to ensure he cannot profit through the British financial system. Sanctioned along with him were officials from Equatorial Guinea, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe who are all also accused of widespread graft.

The disgraced former governor is currently serving a five-year prison sentence in Iraq for corruption. Sultan was arrested along with other officials in March 2019 over a deadly ferry sinking that killed 90 people in Mosul a week earlier during the Newroz holiday.

Many of the people on board the ferry were women and children who could not swim and drowned when the overloaded craft sank in the Tigris river.

The sinking has been described as the worst disaster to strike Mosul since it was recaptured from ISIS two years earlier.