Former Muthanna power chief and 12 staff held over unneeded equipment

BAGHDAD — A court has ordered the detention of Muthanna governorate’s former electricity distribution director and 12 employees over the alleged waste of 6.15 billion dinars on unneeded equipment, Iraq’s Federal Commission of Integrity said Tuesday.

The commission said officials manipulated measurement units and purchase requests in 2024 to order as many electrical panels as possible, and that much of the equipment was never used or installed. The sum was about $4.7 million at the time of the purchases.

Its Muthanna investigations office found the irregularities at the state-owned Southern Electricity Distribution Company’s Muthanna branch and the Sawb al-Kabir maintenance center after auditing procurement records.

Investigators found 48 power factor correction panels, which cut wasted power on the grid, in a store for used materials without ever having been installed. They secured the panels as evidence and seized the original payment documents for the purchase of double panels.

A judge at the Muthanna Integrity Investigation Court ordered the detentions under Article 340 of the Penal Code. The article sets a prison term of up to seven years for public employees who deliberately damage the funds or interests of the body they work for.

The 12 employees include the directorate’s former heads of accounts and sales and the officials in charge of internal audit, substations, the used-materials store and the procurement committee. The court also issued arrest and search warrants for three other employees, one of them a former accounts director, and barred all the accused from travel.

The case is the latest in a run of corruption cases in Iraq’s electricity sector. In July, the commission arrested a Baghdad electricity warehouse manager on allegations of embezzling cables worth more than 4.4 billion dinars (about $3.3 million at the time) with the help of two truck owners.

In August, the Central Anti-Corruption Criminal Court jailed the director general of the state-owned General Company for Electric Power Production in the Middle Euphrates and his office director for six years each for bribery. It also sentenced the Central Electricity Distribution Company’s financial director to three years for illicit gains.

In September, the same court jailed the Central Electricity Distribution Company’s director general, Alaa Samir Rashid, for seven years for illicit enrichment. This month, three employees in Mosul were arrested over a bribe tied to a fake fine.

Iraq’s grid covered less than half of peak demand this summer, and officials estimate that more than half of the power produced is lost before it reaches a paying customer.