Integrity Commission uncovers suspected property fraud in Nasiriyah

Shafaq News- Baghdad

Iraq's Federal Commission of Integrity has uncovered a network that allegedly forged and manipulated records involving the allocation of prime state property in the southern city of Nasiriyah, and arrested the former head of the city's municipal directorate along with several employees.

The country’s anti-corruption watchdog said investigators recovered the original allocation record covering 104 high-value properties, each worth about 100 million dinars ($76.3K), that had been transferred into private ownership through forged documents and regulatory violations. Teams first seized 30 ownership-transfer files as key evidence, followed by 12 additional original files, which the commission said provided further evidence.

The former municipal director and the employees were detained under Article 340 of Iraq's Penal Code, which concerns deliberate harm to public funds or state interests by public officials, the commission said. The suspects were already held in connection with other corruption cases.

The case is the latest in a run of investigations targeting staff and officials at the Nasiriyah municipality in recent months over suspected manipulation of land transactions and harm to public funds, which has brought repeated arrests and raids at the directorate. In August, investigators found nearly 600 land files abandoned by a wanted municipality employee, and an integrity court issued warrants for eight staff, among them a former municipal director, over alleged damage to public funds. Authorities are also examining the alleged manipulation of tens of thousands of residential plots in the city.

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