Al-Radi: Iraqi official theft is largest in the world

The ministry of the former Iraqi defense minister Hazem al-Shaalan was accused of committing violations in the signing of contracts with middlemen instead of companies or foreign governments in order to import defense equipments including helicopters, armored vehicles, bullets and weapons.

The chairman of the general commission for transparency Radi al-Radi said that it is expected that Shaalan and his ministry are responsible for the largest theft in the world, and that the estimates of the commission for the vanished sum is between 1.3 billion to 2.3 billion dollars.

He added that in addition to that contracts with middlemen are not permitted, the ministry paid prices doubled the real cost of the equipment, besides many provisions of the contracts were not implemented. He for instance said that more than $ 230 million was paid for a set of second hand Polish helicopters which are 28 years old. Poland was a supporter of the US in the invasion of Iraq, and has military presence there.

Al-Radi said that al-Shaalan signed contracts with middlemen whose names are not known and paid millions of dollars from his own money for contacts, exceeding the amounts he is authorized for to contract and then he ordered to these payments be made immediately.

He said that Shaalan asked for hiding all the details of all contracts and dealings to remain secret even from the prime minister and the minister of state at that time, and he got the approval for that.

Allawi's government assumed the authority on June 2004 from the interim coalition movement which was led then by the USA which was authorized to run the affairs of Iraq following the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein directly. Allawi's government continued to rule Iraq since then until February this year when a new Iraqi government was formed.