Warrants issued for six successive heads of Diwaniyah municipality

DIWANIYAH — Iraq’s Federal Commission of Integrity said Thursday that judicial authorities had issued about 30 arrest and search warrants over contracts and procurement at the Diwaniyah Municipality Directorate, naming its current director and five men who held the post before him.

The suspects held a range of administrative positions and are accused of benefiting from contracts and procurement deals, taking bribes, embezzling funds, inflating prices and causing losses to public money, the commission said. Those named also include six officials from the accounting and auditing departments and the governorate’s current accounts director.

An investigative team from the commission’s Diwaniyah office arrested 15 employees and three contractors accused of supplying the municipality with overpriced goods and submitting invoices at doubled prices or for work never carried out. Their statements led to warrants for the current director and his five predecessors, the commission said. The current director and several former directors have given statements to investigators, and teams are still searching for the remaining suspects.

Investigators seized spending documents covering municipal transactions worth more than 9 billion dinars (about $6.8 million at the official rate), along with luxury vehicles and sums of money. They also found stamps attributed to employees in the auditing and accounting departments, the purchasing committees and the auditing, gardens and parks divisions.

Judges handling integrity cases ordered the suspects detained and imposed travel bans on several members of the Diwaniyah Provincial Council linked to some of the accused.

The case is the latest in a run of investigations announced since June, led by the case against former Deputy Oil Minister Adnan al-Jumaili, which state media says has produced the arrest of dozens of current and former officials, lawmakers and political figures. On Tuesday the commission said it had seized 2.5 billion dinars from the home of a former accounts department director in Salah al-Din governorate.

Iraq scored 28 out of 100 on Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Perceptions Index, published in February, ranking 136th of 182 countries and territories, up from 26 and 140th the year before. Corruption was among the main grievances behind the nationwide Tishreen protests in 2019, and cases have spanned customs, taxation, procurement, state-owned companies, public contracts, oil and infrastructure.