The first minister to quit Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s unity government criticized the prime minister for turning a blind eye to worsening corruption among his loyalists, in an interview with Agence France-Presse.
Former Iraqi communications minister Mohammed Tawfiq Allawi, who resigned on Aug. 27, added that he was holding documents pointing to graft within the government, but declined to give details, insisting instead they would be released at an unspecified future date.
He said he was “100 percent sure that the people surrounding al-Maliki, they are corrupt people, very close to him, they are highly corrupt people.”
“But definitely, he knows the corrupt people, but those who are loyal to him, he never takes any action. He allows them to be more corrupt, and it is very obvious,” Allawi said at his west London home.
The former minister is a Shiite Muslim member of the secular Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc that is part of Maliki’s unity government, but has long been at odds with the prime minister.
He is also a relative of former Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi, one of Maliki’s main rivals.
He said he had told Maliki directly: “Those people who are loyal to you, they are corrupt people, and you never take any action against them.”
The former minister said the level of corruption in Iraq was “huge,” and that rates of commission on contracts were sometimes as high as 70 percent, but declined to point to specific instances of corruption, or which ministries had particularly high rates of graft.
“You know Iraq is at the top of the list of corrupt countries, at the level of Somalia, Myanmar,” Allawi said, adding: “Those countries, they have no revenue, their budget is ... millions of US dollars, while [Iraq’s budget] is for the last year US$100 billion. The real corruption is in Iraq, not in these countries.”
Iraq regularly ranks atop global rankings of the most corrupt countries in the world.
Most recently, it was the ninth-worst country in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, and diplomats and potential investors often point to graft as an impediment to doing business there.
Allawi said that corruption in Iraq was, if anything, getting worse, saying: “The level of corruption, really it is much more worse than the previous days. It is increasing year after year.”
The former minister stepped down last month, accusing Maliki of “political interference,” in particular complaining of attempts to control who could appoint and transfer senior officials.
His resignation was the latest bout in a protracted and wide-ranging political row between Maliki and his opponents, who have accused him of monopolizing power and exhibiting dictatorial tendencies.
Maliki, for his part, says he is being restricted by an unwieldy coalition government.
Allawi’s remarks on graft were part of a wide-ranging criticism of Maliki’s record as prime minister, saying that the prime minister had accomplished nothing since Iraq’s national unity government was formed in December 2010 following nine months of post-election stalemate.
Parliamentary elections are next due in 2014.
Allawi pointed to still-poor electricity provision nationwide, and a lack of improvements in daily life for ordinary Iraqis, particularly in Baghdad, as well as continuing deadly violence across the country.
“The only thing which he has achieved is deepening sectarianism,” Allawi said, saying that Maliki was courting his Shiite Muslim base by pushing for the trial of Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, a Sunni, among other moves.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
AERIAL INCURSIONS: The incidents are a reminder that Russia’s aggressive actions go beyond Ukraine’s borders, Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said Two NATO members on Sunday said that Russian drones violated their airspace, as one reportedly flew into Romania during nighttime attacks on neighboring Ukraine, while another crashed in eastern Latvia the previous day. A drone entered Romanian territory early on Sunday as Moscow struck “civilian targets and port infrastructure” across the Danube in Ukraine, the Romanian Ministry of National Defense said. It added that Bucharest had deployed F-16 warplanes to monitor its airspace and issued text alerts to residents of two eastern regions. It also said investigations were underway of a potential “impact zone” in an uninhabited area along the Romanian-Ukrainian border. There
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
RSS