Trump administration<\/a> vetoed the leading candidates.<\/p>\nThe negotiations \u2013 really a haggling over the division of spoils \u2013 are a well-rehearsed exercise, repeated after every election for the past two decades, under a system known as muhasasa, which has become the cornerstone of Iraqi politics, devised by Iraqi opposition parties in exile in the 1990s as a power-sharing arrangement that would prevent Iraq from again sliding into a dictatorship. The arrangement was imported wholesale after the 2003 US invasion by those same parties and the Americans; under muhasasa, the prime minister is a Shia, the president a Kurd. But muhasasa also came to mean the division of government posts among all the political factions: Sunni, Shia, Kurdish and others.<\/p>\n
Party bosses and militia commanders feud, threaten and cajole, some claiming to represent the historical rights of their community, others decrying the historical injustices imposed on theirs, all in an attempt to increase their share of the lucrative ministries and state institutions, turning them into party fiefdoms, running every possible scheme to defraud the treasury.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe parties have built states within the state,\u201d an international banker, who was hired by a previous government to help clean up the system, said. \u201cWe probably have seven or eight of these mini-states, siphoning between 5% and 10% of every government contract.\u201d<\/p>\n
Iraq\u2019s oil minister, Basim Mohammed Khudair, speaks at a press conference in Baghdad on 8 August. Photograph: Thaier Al-Sudani\/ReutersThe stooge?<\/p>\n
In the muhasasa power-sharing system, if the minister of oil is Shia, at least one of his deputies \u2013 and it is always \u201chis\u201d \u2013 will be Sunni.<\/p>\n
Here a second round of haggling and horse-trading begins within the Sunni blocs and parties over the lucrative post. It usually comes down to a kind of exchange rate \u2013 how many directors of education, health and culture is one deputy oil minister worth?<\/p>\n
Once a party has won the post, the contest shifts to finding the right candidate. Sometimes the parties bring in someone from within their own ranks, ideologically committed to them, or a relative of the party boss. But in most cases, they choose someone from the bureaucracy instead \u2013 someone familiar with the running of the state, versed in the rules and regulations of an archaic and dysfunctional system: mandarins who have succeeded in weaponising these often-conflicting regulations accumulated over more than a century, from the Ottomans, to the British who imported a system for the Indian Raj, to the military dictators who added a socialist flavour, and finally the young American zealots who arrived in Baghdad after the 2003 war that toppled Saddam Hussein and wanted to create a neoliberal free market state, without any knowledge of Iraq or its history.<\/p>\n
The regulations are deployed at every level to obstruct every state function \u2013 from the issuing of an ID card to the signing of a multibillion-dollar contract \u2013 until a bribe is paid to ensure the task\u2019s smooth completion.<\/p>\n
In January 2025, Adnan al-Jumaili \u2013 a young engineer with a pleasant, smiling, square face, lean, with a trim moustache and thick, prematurely greying hair \u2013 was appointed deputy oil minister responsible for refineries.<\/p>\n
His fast rise through the ranks, first as director of a single refinery, then as director of the state institution overseeing the northern refineries, responsible for several plants, was celebrated in some pro-government local press as the placement of a young, honourable and efficient talent at the helm, one who would end years of mismanagement and setbacks.<\/p>\n
He appears in several videos alongside the then prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, who had been chosen by the same Shia parties to lead a government focused on delivering essential services.In video after video, al-Sudani is shown with his chest puffed out, wearing black sunglasses, cutting ribbons to inaugurate projects and showcase his government\u2019s achievements, while beside him, a smiling al-Jumaili, in a hi-vis vest and helmet, briefs him on the details. In one clip, he even receives an \u201chonourable employee\u201d award from al-Sudani.<\/p>\n
But soon after al-Sudani lost his bid for a second term and al-Zaidi became prime minister, it all came crashing down.<\/p>\n
Al-Jumaili was arrested on 30 May, and soon after images were circulated online of him in a yellow jumpsuit, surrounded by weapons and boxes of ammunition. Photograph: Iraqi Judiciary\/Social Media<\/p>\n
Al-Jumaili was the first to be arrested, on 30 May, and arraigned on television in a yellow jumpsuit, surrounded by dozens of machine guns and boxes of ammunition found at his home. Investigators said they had also recovered $10m (\u00a37.4m) in cash, 3bn dinars (about $2m) and 1.5kg of gold, along with around 40 properties across Baghdad and other provinces. In the weeks that followed, more wealth surfaced: cash stuffed into plastic water bottles, hidden down a rainwater drain, concealed in walls \u2013 and, allegedly, 7bn Iraqi dinars that his wife was caught trying to burn in an outdoor oven. By mid-July, the total seized in the case had reached 127bn dinars ($96m) and $24m in cash, plus properties, vehicles and 375kg of gold, and 70 properties as well as a number of cars.<\/p>\n
What shocked many Iraqis was the sheer vulgarity of it all \u2013 the way the money, the product of elaborate schemes devised to siphon millions, only for it to end up buried underground or stashed in boxes and large, family-size plastic pickle jars.<\/p>\n
Authorities announced in July they had seized a total of 127bn Iraqi dinars in the case of the detained oil ministry undersecretary, Adnan al-Jumaili, and his accomplices. Photograph: sjc.iq<\/p>\n
According to the judicial investigation, al-Jumaili ran a scheme that had yielded hundreds of millions of dollars.<\/p>\n
In a meeting with Iraqi journalists the next day, al-Zaidi said that al-Jumaili had tried to bribe him before his arrest with $200m to keep his post \u2013 in some reports, the total offer was said to reach $600m.<\/p>\n
Whether al-Jumaili was the mastermind of all the corruption, or whether it had been laid out for him in advance, is unknown. But from the moment he arrived at the ministry of oil, he began amassing huge commissions from contracts and awards handed to companies and contractors and from diverted shipments of fuel.<\/p>\n
As last year\u2019s elections neared, he became a conduit for delivering millions of dollars to candidates, many on the prime minister\u2019s list, though not all.<\/p>\n
One politician told the Guardian: \u201cMany parties came in and benefited from working with al-Jumaili, and he regarded all of this as protection for himself.\u201d As his connections to political parties expanded \u2013 not only to the Sunni bloc that had nominated him, but allegedly to his bosses at the ministry of oil and in the prime minister\u2019s office \u2013 he came to believe he was untouchable. And as his political cover grew, he began to commit catastrophic mistakes, the politician said. \u201cBecause, you see, he was telling himself he was now beyond reach \u2013 that it was impossible for anyone to touch him.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo he began making mistakes, overreaching \u2013 faking warehouse deliveries, for example, and diverting fuel to create phantom storage stock that didn\u2019t exist. We started hearing about thousands of phantom day-labourers, whose wages were being paid out even though they didn\u2019t exist in the first place. We heard about transport contracts inside the refineries worth millions of dollars \u2013 contracts at astronomical figures.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Adnan al-Jumaili affair is, I think, a model of the way things are run, the way the process of placing people in particular positions works,\u201d the government insider said. \u201cThese positions are responsible for generating large revenues, illegally, for a party or for several parties. It\u2019s like bitcoin mining, you see, they generate money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Investigations into al-Jumaili\u2019s financial dealings had begun the previous October, when the judiciary began looking into spending irregularities in the elections and discovered that he had funnelled money to numerous candidates. This eventually led to his arrest and, after his confessions, to the mass arrests on 28 June.<\/p>\n
Iraq\u2019s then prime minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani meets the US envoy, Tom Barrack, left, in Baghdad in January 2026. Photograph: Iraqi prime minister media office\/Reuters\u2018That chapter must close\u2019<\/p>\n
The investigations and arrests coincided with two things: severe pressure on Iraqi finances brought on by the war, and a more active role by the US in shaping Iraqi politics.<\/p>\n
According to government insiders, members of parliament and a source close to the judiciary, the Americans \u2013 weary of dealing with Iraqi politicians continuously failing to achieve any reforms \u2013 had built a rapport instead with the Iraqi judiciary. The new American envoy, Tom Barrack, played an active role, encouraged by the judiciary\u2019s increasingly assertive statements on the state\u2019s monopoly of weapons.<\/p>\n
For many months, investigators searched for a corruption case that could be exposed publicly. The challenge was finding one that, when exposed, would make headlines domestically and internationally, while guaranteeing that the fallout would not bring down the entire post-2003 political system. Al-Jumaili\u2019s case was perfect: it implicated a number of prominent politicians, but stopped short of naming the big party bosses.<\/p>\n
As one official put it: \u201cYou don\u2019t know, in the end, if you keep pressing on these parties \u2013 what might the armed factions do? What might Iran do?\u201d The case also touched a nerve sensitive to the Americans specifically: the smuggling of Iraqi oil.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe government and judiciary are aiming to achieve two goals,\u201d the government insider said. \u201cThe first is to recover as much as possible of the money that the parties and political leaders have siphoned over the years.\u201d (In several statements, the prime minister has hinted that if the money is returned, there will be no further legal repercussions.) \u201cThe second is to sever, in all its forms and details, the relationship between the parties and the state \u2013 meaning the relationship between the economic offices of these parties and every corner of the state apparatus. In other words: the parties will no longer be able to extract anything from the state.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea that the parties live off quotas they receive from the state \u2013 through projects, commissions and so forth \u2013 must come to an end. That chapter must close. And I believe this is the most important thing that could happen in Iraq\u2019s modern history.\u201d<\/p>\n
It seems that bringing in al-Zaidi, or at least the support he is getting from the US and the judiciary, was calculated precisely for this moment, he and other officials said. Someone with sufficient experience and knowledge of the mechanisms involved in routing money out of the state, who knows how money is smuggled, channelled and extracted through contracts, projects, commissions and so forth.<\/p>\n
Will this latest drive to fight corruption deliver any serious results? Or will it turn out to be, at best, another cosmetic operation \u2013 if not a case of political score-settling? And how can Iraq become a normal state, capable of reform, while it sits on a regional faultline, caught amid a multi-pronged war fought across its land and skies \u2013 and can that reform ever be achieved without accountability for the party bosses and the mini-states they\u2019ve built?<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are no guarantees that corruption will end, and that parties will stop looting the state,\u201d the government insiders said. \u201cBut what we\u2019re hearing is that there really is a governmental and judicial desire to end a certain phase and begin a new one \u2013 a situation where things are normal, where basic services are available, where this constant crisis over fuel, electricity, water and every other detail comes to an end. Where the situation becomes normal, meaning: our state becomes like any other state in the world, with its successes and its failures.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The gates of the Green Zone in Baghdad are made of five-metre-high armoured steel, reinforced with horizontal girders,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":890832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-890831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/890831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=890831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=890831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}