by David Phinney
April 5, 2007 — The most dangerous job in Iraq?: Asking questions about the missing billions of dollars in Iraq assets.
The country’s top corruption fighter, Radi al-Radhi, who runs the Public Integrity Commission, tells the Associated Press that 20 members of his organization have been murdered since it began its work.
On Wednesday al-Radhi said that $8 billion in government money was wasted or stolen over the past three years. After opening an investigation into scores of Oil Ministry employees, he claimed he was threatened with death.
Meanwhile: An estimated $2 billion disappeared from funds to rebuild the electricity infrastructure.
Former Electricity Minister Ayham al-Samaraie, who holds both U.S. and Iraqi citizenship, was convicted in that case and sentenced to two years in prison.
Who can forget?: Iraqi officials arrested al-Samaraie last August. He was convicted of corruption and given a two-year sentence. Just months later, he broke out of an Iraqi-run jail in the Green Zone on Dec. 17 with the help of a private security company
(free dinner to anyone who tells me what company that was). Al-Samaraie claimed he had become a target for assassination, according to published reports. He turned up in Chicago on Jan, 15 where he had immigrated there 30 years ago and became a partner in a suburban engineering firm. After the 2003 Coalition invasion, Al-Samaraie raced back to Iraq and became a member of the transitional Iraqi government.
Al-Radhi said the commission has investigated about 2,600 corruption cases since it was established in March 2004, a few months before the United States returned sovereignty to Iraq. He estimated $8 billion has vanished or been misappropriated.
Corruption in the country, while traditionally rampant, is encouraged by constitutional clause 136 B, al-Radhi said. It gives Cabinet ministers the power to block his investigations.
So far, he said, ministers have blocked probes into the theft or misspending of an estimated additional $55 million in public funds.
