Residents of the Baghdad Green Zone woke up one day late last month to the sound of US-made Abrams tanks rolling into the neighbourhood followed by armoured personnel carriers and vehicles painted with the emblems of the elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS).
It was a pre-dawn display of military strength that many in the fortified district that hosts main government offices, the parliament, and the homes of the ruling elites feared could be a military coup.
Shortly afterwards news began spreading across the Internet via sharing on social media platforms about the arrests of senior politicians, lawmakers, key government officials, and well-known faces on nightly talk shows.
Footage that appeared on X, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram showed the piles of Iraqi banknotes and US dollars found in houses, offices, and stables belonging to the detainees.
Bundles of Iraqi dinars (ID) and US dollars were seen being pulled out of manholes or unearthed by bulldozers digging in the grounds of houses and farms owned by the suspects’ family members.
Some of the dirty money was reportedly burned in traditional outdoor clay ovens to avoid its being found by the security forces.
The crackdown triggered an online rush, with both social media reactions and AI-generated posts expressing shock and outrage at the findings.
The Iraqi News Agency reported the arrests of 15 suspects, including at least 12 members of parliament and political figures.
It said that the MPs who had been arrested had had their immunity lifted by the speaker at the request of the judiciary.
In a statement, Iraq’s Higher Judicial Council said the total value of the seized assets totalled about ID127 billion, along with $24 million and five kg of gold bars.
Additional amounts of cash and gold jewellery were later found in the sweeping anti-corruption operations, government Spokesman Haidar Al-Aboudi said. He said that Prime Minister Ali Al-Zaidi had ordered the money seized in Operation Dawn Assault to go into the government’s coffers.
Al-Zaidi told the cabinet the next day that “the government will continue its efforts to combat corruption in order to recover public funds,” stressing that there would be no leniency in order “to protect the interests of the Iraqi people.”
To many Iraqis, however, the new government’s arrests of a few corrupt officials and lawmakers and the display of their stolen riches was just another roll of the dice.
Corruption has been rife in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion of the country that toppled former dictator Saddam Hussein. Many politicians have been arrested or removed from office for malpractice only to be pardoned later.
Corruption in Iraq is also widespread and multifaceted. It is deeply rooted and contributes to income inequality, cripples economic development, erodes government institutions, and compromises their legitimacy.
Iraq is considered to be one of the most corrupt countries in the world. It was ranked 136th out of 182 nations in the international NGO Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Index.
Resident Representative of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) for Iraq Titon Mitra revealed last week that up to 20 per cent of Iraq’s public funds have been lost to corruption.
Mitra told the local media that “between $150 and $450 billion in assets may have been moved overseas or hidden within Iraq,” making them difficult or even impossible to recover.
Other estimates put the money stolen or turned into assets inside Iraq or smuggled out of the country in corrupt deals since the 2003 US-led invasion at $2 trillion.
Former Iraqi governments have boasted frequently of campaigns targeting widespread graft in Iraqi officialdom, but their efforts have failed because they stopped short of confronting the entrenched political and economic structures behind the corruption.
Former prime minister Mohammad Shia Al-Sudani disclosed upon his accession to power in 2022 a heist of the equivalent of almost $2.5 billion from the Iraqi tax authorities, with this being quickly dubbed the “theft of the century.”
But Iraq’s biggest corruption scandal, which emerged under Al-Sudani’s predecessor Mustafa Al-Kadhumi’s Western-backed government, has not been fully investigated and powerful individuals alleged to be implicated have not been questioned.
A striking pattern marks Iraq’s anti-corruption campaigns. In addition to raising questions about the effectiveness of their approach to fighting Iraq’s pervasive corruption, they often lack seriousness and focus on individual cases rather than systemic transparency.
Overall evidence suggests the absence of monitoring as well as the potential control by governments and parliament as among the main reasons for the lack of success of such campaigns.
Corruption has led to the proliferation of networks of bribery, extortion, fraud, and embezzlement across the country, with these being centred around individual leaders, parties, and militias and their becoming very powerful as a result.
With annual budgets that reach over $100 billion and a government that is based on a power-sharing system, the rot runs through the country’s system of sectarian oligarchs, and graft forms the backbone of conducting business and getting things done in Iraq.
Over the years, this cross-sectarian cabal has mastered scams at every level, including crude oil looting, state assets plundering, bank frauds, contract scams, government payroll embezzlements, and checkpoint shakedowns.
Powerful militias deeply entrenched in the state system keep the corruption alive through patronage networks aided and abetted by the political class that is benefiting from their protection.
Kleptocracy is by now the familiar name of the oligarchs and their accomplices who are freely and fraudulently diverting public resources for personal gain in Iraq and have not stopped at amassing wealth by stealing state funds but have also systematically destroyed their own nation.
The thirst for graft and easy money in Iraq has even reached Western-funded civil-society groups and staff working for the UN in the country, some of them entrusted with combating corruption efforts.
In January 2024, the UK newspaper the Guardian reported that employees on a UNDP project were involved in demanding bribes in return for helping businessmen win contracts in Iraq.
Foreign countries are deeply involved, and not just because of their dealings with businesses associated with corruption. They are also providing safe havens for stolen money to be laundered through the banking system.
Much of the plundered money is passed on to commercial banks, ostensibly for imports from neighbouring countries in a process that is assisted by officials and money-laundering cartels.
Even the United States, reportedly pushing for a crackdown to deprive the militias of cash from illicit activities, is deeply implicated in the corruption, not just because its invasion wrecked the country but also because it brought the oligarchs to power and has supported them in their activities.
Few Iraqis believe that the present anti-corruption campaign will deliver or result in genuine accountability. Many no longer have confidence in the nation’s political system or judiciary.
The latest purge was met with ridicule online and with comments deriding the suspects or mocking members of the Iraqi parliament’s integrity committee.
Some of the sarcasm targeted Al-Zaidi himself, a multi-millionaire who built his business empire on a shady money-exchange system and on supplying the Iraqi army with rations and the government-run national food basket programme worth billions of dollars.
Iraqis know what ails their country: it is the catastrophic ineptitude of the post-Saddam ruling elites who have squandering opportunities to rebuild Iraq, one of the world’s most resource-rich countries, into a functional state.
The kleptocracy that controls the government, parliament, and judiciary has been undermining efforts to rid Iraq of the corruption that has drained the country of its resources and devastated its citizens’ lives.
These cliques, performing like an Iraqi version of the US political thriller House of Cards, have insulated themselves from scrutiny and accountability by controlling the government, framing the parliament, and forging subservient ties with the judiciary.
While the big fish remain protected and are evading accountability, the smaller ones will likely get away with their crimes through amnesties or lenient prison terms.
Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council has already offered to include the suspects in the latest scandal in an amnesty programme passed years ago in return for portions of the stolen public funds.
It is in this way that they can then get back into the game and business as usual.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 16 July, 2026 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly.
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