Three Mosul electricity employees arrested over bribe tied to fake fine

NINEVEH — Three electricity sector employees were arrested in Mosul on suspicion of demanding a bribe from a resident to cancel a fictitious fine for illegally tapping the national grid, Iraq’s Federal Commission of Integrity said Saturday.

An investigative team from the commission’s Nineveh directorate arrested the three at the electricity department serving Mosul’s right bank after the resident filed a complaint, the commission said in a statement.

The employees allegedly told the man he had been fined for illegally connecting to the national grid and demanded money to cancel the penalty.

Investigators referred the three to the Nineveh investigative court for integrity cases, where the judge ordered them detained under amended Decision No. 160 of 1983, which sets penalties for public employees who take bribes.

The arrests come months after Nineveh authorities launched a campaign against illegal electricity connections. In June, Governor Abdul Qader al-Dakhil said unauthorized connections were among the causes of power losses estimated at 40% of the governorate’s total supply. The campaign followed a Supreme Judicial Council directive classifying illegal connections as theft of public funds, punishable by imprisonment.

Iraq’s electricity sector has faced a series of corruption cases. In August, two senior officials at the state-owned General Company for Electric Power Production in the Middle Euphrates were sentenced to six years in prison for bribery. In September, the director general of the Central Electricity Distribution Company received a seven-year sentence for illicit enrichment.