Ex-Investigator Details Iraqi Corruption

October 5, 2007
Ex-Investigator Details Iraqi Corruption

The Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has thwarted investigations into corruption at the top levels of his administration, including probes of his relatives, while nearly four dozen anti-corruption employees or their family members have been brutally murdered, the former top Iraqi corruption investigator told a House panel yesterday.

Judge Radhi Hamza al-Radhi, the former commissioner of the Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity, has sought asylum in the United States, according to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Radhi said his investigators had uncovered "rampant" corruption in Iraqi ministries that had cost the country as much as $18 billion, but only 241 cases, out of 3,000 forwarded to the courts, had been adjudicated.