Seven more properties found in case of former Salah al-Din accounts chief

SALAH AL-DIN — The Federal Commission of Integrity said Sunday it had found seven more properties registered to a former head of accounts at the Salah al-Din Governorate Office, his wife and relatives, after searching his home in al-Alam.

Investigators from the commission’s Salah al-Din office, acting on a court order, seized the original files for three houses in residential complexes, two registered to his wife and one to him, and four property deeds in the names of his wife, her brother and one of his sons, the commission said. The former official remains in custody.

He was detained on allegations that he prepared and issued a check for 425 million dinars (about $280,000 at the official rate) backed by fictitious documents. In late July the commission said it had seized 2.5 billion dinars in cash from his home and found six investment properties registered to his wife.

Property fraud has produced more than a dozen cases across the country in recent months. In late September, a Dhi Qar court cancelled the registration of 46 municipal plots in Nasiriyah and returned them to the city after investigators found they had been transferred through manipulation and forgery, the Supreme Judicial Council said. Nine people were arrested on Sept. 22 over a network led by the director of the Abu Gharaq Real Estate Registration Department that hid the 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 the names of her husband, relatives and intermediaries. The National Security Service arrested 61 people in Muthanna on Aug. 28 over more than 90 forged land transactions and about 2 billion dinars (about $1.3 million at the official rate) 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.