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BAGHDAD-
A former Iraqi electrical energy minister discovered responsible of wrongfully awarding a multi-million-dollar contract was solely handed a minor effective, an anti-fraud physique revealed Thursday, sparking a public outcry.
Louay al-Khatib was given a one-year suspended sentence and fined a million Iraqi dinars (round $685) by a Baghdad courtroom earlier this month, in line with the cost sheet.
Three officers from the ministry had been additionally sentenced.
Iraq’s fee for transparency, which oversees corruption circumstances, mentioned the 4 had been convicted of getting dedicated “deliberate irregularities” by awarding an $808 million contract to an organization with out correct credentials.
The contract known as for the “rehabilitation, administration and upkeep” of a Baghdad energy station, the fee mentioned.
However the agency, which was not named, “just isn’t specialised within the upkeep and rehabilitation” of energy stations, it mentioned.
When information broke out of the sentence, Iraqis vented their frustration and anger at what they understand to be rampant corruption within the oil-rich nation.
“It is a reward … not a sentence for corruption”, Mustafa Saadoun, the top of the Iraqi Observatory for Human Rights, wrote on Twitter.
Kurdish political analyst Shajo al-Kara Daghi agreed.
“Are these actual and dissuasive sentences aimed toward preventing towards corruption and the corrupt?” Daghi wrote on Twitter. “Or is it a bid to encourage corruption, fraud and illicit features?”
Iraq has persistently ranked low on Transparency Worldwide’s Corruption Perceptions Index, coming in 157th out of 180 international locations for perceived corruption ranges in state establishments final 12 months.
In 2019, Iraq was rocked by huge protests fuelled by expenses of widespread official corruption, incompetence and financial hardships.
Regardless of being wealthy in oil and fuel, Iraq’s electrical energy infrastructure has suffered from years of negligence and warfare, and faces common energy cuts.
The sector has been additionally riddled with allegations of corruption.
In January a senior official on the electrical energy ministry was sentenced to 6 years in jail in a case involving bribes.
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