BAGHDAD: Police yesterday detained Iraq’s former trade minister in connection with graft allegations involving food rations, ordering a plane in which he was flying to Dubai to turn back, witnesses and officials said.
An Iraqi judge issued an arrest warrant for former Trade Minister Abdul Falah Al-Sudany yesterday, but he had already boarded a plane to Dubai, Parliament’s anti-graft watchdog said.
A passenger traveling on the same plane said it was turned back about half an hour into the flight. “The captain told us we had to go back to Baghdad because of congestion at Dubai airport,” passenger Abdul-Muhsin Salem said, adding that about 250 other travelers were on board. “On arrival, he (the minister) was taken by two plainclothes security officers from the plane at Baghdad airport. They were very polite. He wasn’t handcuffed or anything.”
Sudany resigned this month over a corruption scandal relating to Iraq’s public food ration program, one of the world’s biggest.
The scandal, in which millions of dollars meant to buy food imports were embezzled or taken in kickbacks by officials in Iraq’s Grain Board and in the ministry, has already led to the arrest of one of Sudany’s brothers and the flight of another.
Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki, who is close to Sudany, has pledged to crack down on endemic graft, a top concern of Iraqis before parliamentary elections next January.
The Trade Ministry controversy erupted shortly after a video circulated in Baghdad apparently showing one of the brothers and a ministry spokesman cavorting with a belly dancer and a lap dancer. One of the men insults Al-Maliki in the video, which appears to have been recorded on a cellular phone.
The head of Iraq’s Integrity Commission in Parliament, Sabah Al-Saedi, said he had called Baghdad airport after the arrest warrant was issued to order that the former minister’s plane be recalled. Saedi said the minister had booked air tickets to both Dubai and Amman.
