The legal adviser to the Iraqi prime minister, Judge Munir Haddad, has revealed that the volume of funds looted from Iraq since 2003 to the present exceeds the two-trillion-dollar mark, and that the figures involved in the thefts and the properties belonging to suspects surpass the bounds of reason and logic.
The Iraqi News Agency (INA) quoted Haddad as saying that "investigations with arrested suspects are ongoing and there are no final statistics on the number of those detained, as arrests continue to rise, based on continuous daily operations and raids, and that the principal suspects currently in custody have given detailed confessions that have led security and judicial agencies to bring in additional suspects."
He added: "Some of those wanted have attempted to escape and flee outside Iraq or take refuge in the Kurdistan Region, which has shown cooperation and handed over eight suspects so far."
He noted that "the list of suspects includes corrupt senior officials among them current and former officials as well as members of parliament, and that the crimes under review are not limited to conventional embezzlement but also include cases of abnormal financial enrichment, which are directly subject to the principle of 'how did you come by this?' and are legally classified as money-laundering offences."
The adviser to the Iraqi prime minister said that "the figures seized in the possession of ministry agents and officials are beyond reading or belief, to the extent that the wife of one suspect purchased a property worth 5 million dollars — a sum sufficient to build the largest villa in Paris or Amsterdam — in addition to officials being found to each own more than 50 properties registered in their own names or in the names of their family members."
He also stated that "the campaign will extend to offices in Nasiriyah, Amarah, and the remaining governorates without any exceptions or red lines, and there will be no time limit for concluding this offensive; investigations and raids are currently being conducted in complete secrecy to ensure that wanted individuals do not flee, and that the prime minister has shown great firmness and rejected pressure and objections from political parties that fear being ensnared by the chain of confessions."
Haddad said that "the campaign will inevitably reach the stage of public trials and open sessions to be broadcast before citizens, exactly as the trials held for Saddam Hussein and his former regime, and that a convicted person's place is in prison; even if someone is released on bail, that does not mean acquittal — a trial awaits them and they will not escape, particularly since conditional release on bail requires the payment of amounts equivalent to the volume of the stolen funds."