DRAFTING.- Iraqi authorities today called on the United States and the United Kingdom to extradite at least three former high-level officials accused of involvement in the so-called “theft of the century”, a corruption case in which 2,500 million dollars were stolen from the public treasury.
In a press conference, the head of the Iraqi Integrity Commission, Judge Haidar Hanon, asked Washington and London to “hand over” these members of the Government of Mustafa al Kazemi (2020-2022), who have the nationality of these countries and reside there.
Among them are former Finance Minister Ali Allawi, who has British nationality; the head of the Intelligence service and former director of the prime minister’s office, Raed Yuhy, a US national, and Al Kazemi’s secretary, Ahmed Najati, also a US national.
Others wanted are the former director of the Iraqi Commercial Bank, Hamdya al Yaaf, the former director general of the Ministry of Health, Nuras Abdelraziq, and the former mayor of the city of Al Halah, Mohamed Hadi.
These are the officials who have been issued “red alerts”, that is, arrest warrants already issued by an Iraqi court at the beginning of March and which have now acquired an international character.
According to Judge Hanon, “the number of defendants stands at 48 people who will not be out of bars for long.”
He also indicated that each of these allegedly corrupt took into his own pocket “no less than 100,000 million Iraqi dinars”, about 80 million dollars per person.
“It is the largest corruption case discovered to date,” said Hanon, who recalled that what is known as the “theft of the century” also involves charges of “treason.”
According to the investigations announced in November by the Iraqi government, the money stolen from the Treasury bank account was sent to Nur Zuhair Jasim, an important businessman who participated in this corruption scheme who was arrested and later released after promising to return the amount. whole.
