Dhi Qar governor says 200 investigations have produced 50 court referrals

DHI QAR — Dhi Qar has formed more than 200 investigative committees into employee violations since Gov. Haitham Aziz al-Hamdani took office, imposing around 100 disciplinary penalties and referring more than 50 employees to specialized courts, he told 964media.

Committees recovering public funds have retrieved more than 6 billion dinars (about $4.5 million at the official rate) from companies working on projects in the governorate and from cases involving government departments. Others assessed financial liability of more than 20 billion dinars against employees found responsible for violations, including cases involving land allocation records. In cases involving employees covered by the General Amnesty Law, Hamdani said he had asked the legal department to establish the damage to public funds, which came to more than 30 billion dinars — five times what has been recovered.

At Nasiriyah municipality, where investigations established what he described as financial and administrative corruption, the provincial administration has taken over direct monitoring, dismissed several section and unit heads and transferred employees whose failures were established. Staff facing action at the Nasiriyah court or under investigation by the Integrity Commission have been removed from their posts, and several municipal records have been cancelled over suspicions about the employees involved.

The municipality has been told to process land plot applications through an electronic platform and is introducing a barcode system intended to cut in-person visits and processing times and reduce opportunities for extortion. A committee of specialist staff will monitor every department and report weekly to the provincial administration.

Municipality employees and brokers were arrested last week on suspicion of forging documents for residential land plots, with investigators seizing official seals, records, forged powers of attorney, communication devices and weapons in raids run by the Federal Commission of Integrity’s Dhi Qar office and the governorate’s Intelligence Directorate. Provincial Council Integrity Committee chairman Abdul-Baqi al-Omari said Monday that investigators were uncovering networks of people holding official stamps and signatures, and a senior source said Saturday that further files and documents had been seized.

Corruption investigations have widened nationally since the arrest of former Deputy Oil Minister Adnan al-Jumaili in May. Investigators have itemized recoveries of about 82 billion dinars and $131.6 million in cash along with 424 kilograms of gold.