Tikrit property registry deputy director and employee jailed for four years

BAGHDAD — The deputy director of the Tikrit Real Estate Registration Office and an employee have been sentenced to four years in prison for deliberately breaching their duties in an illegal property transfer, the Federal Commission of Integrity said Sunday.

The Salah al-Din Criminal Court convicted the two in person after finding the evidence showed intentional neglect of duty, following an investigation by the commission. They completed a property transfer in Tikrit without attaching the buyers’ and sellers’ identity documents, without taking mandatory fingerprints from all the sellers, and without the required security clearances and official powers of attorney, the commission said. They also failed to register liens with the Salah al-Din Real Estate Registration Directorate, in violation of the Real Estate Registration Law.

Property fraud has produced more than a dozen cases across the country in recent months. On Oct. 13, the commission stopped the registration of 57 state properties Babil Railways had sold to its own staff below market value, saying it had prevented a loss of nearly 24 billion dinars (about $15.8 million at the official rate). 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.