Nineveh governor says he sued over Mosul airport leases Zaidi canceled

NINEVEH — Nineveh Governor Abdul Qader al-Dakhil said Saturday that he had sued the former transport minister over three Mosul International Airport leases that Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi canceled the same day because of the companies’ alleged links to armed groups.

The Transport Ministry and the Iraqi Airports Management Department awarded the contracts under former Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s government without consulting the governor or the Nineveh Provincial Council, Dakhil told 964media. The leases covered the airport’s passenger counters, its parking lot and its taxi office.

He said he had filed a lawsuit against former Transport Minister Razzaq Muhaibis al-Saadawi and the airports department, then took the matter to Zaidi, whose government completed an investigation that found a serious breach. Dakhil gave 964media three documents, including copies of two of the contracts and his written objection to the third.

A source told the state-run Iraqi News Agency on Saturday that Zaidi had ordered the cancellation of Sky Plus’s lease on the counters, Sama al-Matar’s on the open-air parking lot inside the airport and al-Faisal al-Shamikh’s on the taxi office because of their links to armed groups. The services will be offered to international companies instead, the source said.

Neither the source nor Dakhil named the armed groups. The governor said the link was the prime minister’s finding, not the local government’s.

“It was the prime minister who discovered that the companies that won the Mosul airport contracts were linked to armed groups, and we did not know about this,” Dakhil said. The three companies have not commented publicly.

The governor’s documents date his objections to March, two months before Zaidi’s government took office. In the same interview, however, Dakhil gave a much shorter timeline.

“We only discovered the contracts a week ago, and we immediately filed a lawsuit against the minister and the airports administrations,” he said. He did not name the court hearing the case.

Under its contract, al-Faisal al-Shamikh General Trading and Contracting Company, which gave a Basra address, was to run the taxi office for three years, renewable, at about 17 million dinars (about $13,000 at the time) a year. Sama al-Matar’s lease on the parking lot, also for three renewable years, was worth about 1.8 billion dinars (about $1.4 million at the time) over the full term.

Dakhil’s objection to the third contract describes Sky Plus as an Emirati company and lists services including aircraft operation, air cargo, logistics, aircraft leasing and ground handling. The three-year lease set rent at $1,000 per square meter a year, or $42,000 for the counters, rising to $58,800 with electricity, water and security fees, according to the document.

Dakhil said he had secured Zaidi’s approval to offer the canceled contracts to reputable international companies. He called the cancellation “a courageous and heroic decision.”

At a meeting with Dakhil on Saturday, Zaidi ordered officials to speed up getting the airport running by contracting reputable, specialized international companies to operate and jointly manage it, his office said. The statement did not mention the canceled contracts. On a visit to Mosul on Oct. 12, Zaidi had invited international airport operators to invest in the airport.

The cancellations follow a wider review of airport contracts. On Nov. 4, a source told INA that the Federal Commission of Integrity, Iraq’s main anti-corruption body, was auditing Transport Ministry and airport contracts and had found manipulation suspected of serving the economic interests of what the source called outlaw armed groups. That source did not name the groups, the companies or the airports involved, and it is not clear whether the Mosul contracts were part of the audit.

In an administrative order 964media reported Oct. 31, the state airports company demoted the former head of its airports department and referred him to the commission over lease contracts for VIP lounges, electronic gates, fast-track passenger services and offices at Baghdad International Airport, along with other contracts at the Baghdad and Basra airports.

Sudani inaugurated the rebuilt airport in July 2025 and said it would be fully operational within two months, once a specialized operating company was chosen. The first domestic flight was scheduled for November 2025. The airport had been shut for 11 years after the Islamic State group seized Mosul in 2014 and wrecked it.