Iraq hands lawmaker 6 year prison sentence for bribery
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – An Iraqi anti-graft court has handed a six-year prison sentence to a member of the national parliament on bribery charges, the Iraqi Commission of Integrity announced on Tuesday.
Police forces detained lawmaker Mahmoud Abdul-Radha Talal last month for corruption committed in central Baghdad’s Jadriya neighborhood, the commission has said previously. Talal is the former president of Wasit Provincial Council and is a member of the legislature’s Wisdom Movement bloc, led by senior politician and cleric Ammar Al-Hakim.
The commission said in a statement that the court had convicted Talal for “receiving the amount of $150,000 in exchange for ceasing to obstruct the business of a company,” but gave no further details.
Such cases have been widespread in a country plagued by institutional corruption, a major reason for current ongoing anti-government demonstrations. Starting in October, Iraq has been engulfed in nationwide protests, in which over 500 people have been killed in clashes between security forces and demonstrators, and thousands of others injured.
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Last month, Baghdad’s Karkh Investigation Court issued an arrest warrant for another lawmaker, Talal al-Zubaie, himself the former chief of the Commission of Integrity.
In late August, Parliament Speaker Mohammed al-Halbousi directed a letter to the Supreme Judicial Council, informing it of a decision to lift Zubaie’s parliamentary immunity.
Halbousi had claimed that parliament had received several “corruption” complaints against Zubaie while he was heading the commission in the previous term.
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Successive Iraqi federal governments have not been able to curb rampant corruption. The current government, which ran on a reformist platform, continues to struggle to address the widespread mismanagement of public funds while facing strong resistance from within its own institutions.
Iraq has one of the world’s largest oil reserves and is the second-largest oil producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). However, its citizens suffer from extreme poverty and high unemployment rates.
The embattled Middle Eastern nation continues to rank high on Transparency International’s list for corruption, fraud, and mismanagement of state institutions, some of the most significant challenges facing the country since the fall of the former regime in 2003.
According to the organization’s 2018 Corruption Index, Iraq ranks 168th, the 12th most corrupt country out of a total of 180.
Editing by John J. Catherine