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Investigator: Corruption Is 'Rampant' in Iraqi Government
Iraqi Official Tells House Committee Corruption Is Growing Steadily
By William Branigin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 4, 2007; 4:06 PM
A former top Iraqi corruption investigator told a House committee today that corruption is "rampant" in the Iraqi government -- costing the country's treasury as much as $18 billion during the past three years -- and is growing steadily worse amid violence and intimidation directed at officials charged with combating it.
Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, an Iraqi judge who headed the Commission on Public Integrity set up by U.S. authorities in 2004, testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that 31 commission employees and at least 12 of their family members have been assassinated in an effort to stop corruption investigations.
"In a number of cases, my staff and their relatives have been kidnapped or detained and tortured prior to being killed," Radhi said. Among those slain, he said, have been a staff member who was gunned down with his wife, who was seven months pregnant, and his security chief's father, whose body was found hanging from a meat hook.
Radhi charged that corruption reaches high into the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who he said has shut down investigations into the diversion of billions of dollars. He said he could not say whether Maliki is personally involved in the malfeasance, but he charged that the prime minister "has protected some of his relatives who were involved in corruption," including a former minister of transportation.
Radhi said escalating threats against him and his family have forced him to seek asylum in the United States. He arrived in August at the head of a delegation for forensics and evidence training with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Also testifying before the committee today were David M. Walker, the U.S. comptroller general, and Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction. They agreed that corruption is rampant in Iraq today and expressed frustration that the United States has not come up with a coordinated strategy to deal with it.
The hearing followed a tussle between the committee chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice over Waxman's request for documents and testimony from State Department officials regarding Iraqi corruption.
Waxman last week accused Rice of interfering with the committee's work after she sought to place broad areas of inquiry off limits.
In an e-mail to the committee shortly before scheduled interviews with department officials last week, the State Department warned that certain "redlines" should not be crossed in questioning about Iraqi corruption. It said the restricted areas included: "broad statements/assessments which judge or characterize the quality of Iraqi governance or the ability/determination of the Iraqi government to deal with corruption, including allegations that investigations were thwarted/stifled for political reasons; [and] statements/allegations concerning actions by specific individuals, such as the Prime Minister or other [Government of Iraq] officials, or regarding investigations of such officials."
The dispute originated in August when the Nation magazine published an account of an internal memo by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. The 82-page draft document, which was subsequently widely leaked, said the Iraqi government was "not capable of even rudimentary enforcement" of its own anticorruption laws and would not meet "any reasonable timeline" for improvement.
In an opening statement today, Waxman said the committee was conducting the investigation in view of the fact that more than 3,800 U.S. soldiers have been killed, more than 28,000 have been wounded and more than $450 billion has been spent in Iraq in an effort to turn the country into a functioning democracy. That effort is threatened by "an epidemic of corruption," which is "undermining political reconciliation, turning ordinary Iraqis against the government and fueling the insurgency," he said.
"The Maliki government is our ally in Iraq," Waxman said. "But we need to ask: Is the Maliki government too corrupt to succeed? And if the Maliki government is corrupt, we need to ask whether we can in good conscience continue to sacrifice our blood and tax dollars to prop up his regime."
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So we're pumping BILLIONS into Iraq to fix infrastructure yet they have 18 billion to lose? I just don't get what goes on over there.
10-04-2007, 04:23 PM
