Court returns 46 forged plots to Nasiriyah municipality

DHI QAR — A Dhi Qar court has cancelled the registrations of 46 municipal plots in Nasiriyah and returned them to the city after investigators found they had been transferred to individuals through manipulation and forgery, the Supreme Judicial Council said. The land is valued at 1.715 billion dinars, about $1.3 million at the official rate.

Several people have been arrested through coordination between the Federal Commission of Integrity and security forces, said the judge handling the case at the Dhi Qar Integrity Investigation Court. All registrations found unlawful were cancelled and the plots re-registered in the name of the Nasiriyah Municipality Department.

It is the third case involving Nasiriyah municipal land in two months. The Federal Commission of Integrity said earlier this month it had uncovered a network accused of forging records for 104 properties at the Nasiriyah Municipality Directorate, worth about 10.4 billion dinars, and municipal employees and brokers were held in the city in August over forged documents for residential plots.

Property records have produced more than a dozen cases across the country in that time. Nine people were arrested on Sept. 22 over a network led by the director of the Abu Gharaq Real Estate Registration Department that hid ownership of more than 170 properties, with some records recovered from the Hilla river. An assistant director at the Salah al-Din Real Estate Registration Directorate put about 95 properties across three governorates in her husband’s, relatives’ and intermediaries’ names. The National Security Service arrested 61 people in Muthanna on Aug. 28 over more than 90 forged land transactions and about 2 billion dinars in losses, two Najaf municipal legal staff were caught taking a bribe over a forged barcode on a land document, and 13 people were arrested in Diwaniyah over falsified papers used to obtain loans and land.