2,300 defendants in corruption cases in 10 months

ARBIL / IraqiNews.com: The Chairman of the Iraqi Integrity Commission, Rahim al-Ugeily, has announced on Thursday that 2,300 defendants have been sent to courts this year on charges of corruption, in excess of 600 billion (b) Iraqi Dinars (US$535 million approx.). 600 persons have been sentenced to different jail sentences. Judge Ugeily was speaking in a workshop taking place in Arbil, the capital of north Iraq‘s Kurdistan Region, allocated for carrying out a general survey for the activity and integrity of the public sector employees in Iraq, in which he called for the legislation of laws to protect informers and persons reporting from financial and administrative corruption, in order to liquidate this phenomena. “Iraq is in need of defining the symptoms of corruption, their size and environment, as well as the reasons for its appearance, in order to put an end for such phenomena, reiterating the significance to carry out such surveys,” Ugeily said. “Iraq must carry out a general survey for the public sector, in order to define the passive points and to carry out reform measures for those positions,” pointing out that the experimental survey carried out last year had “uncovered that the majority of the public sector employees, i.e. 72 percent of them, fear corruption reports,” he noted. SKH/SR 1