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Lebanon, Jordan extradite ex-Iraq ministers to Baghdad

January 12, 2018 at 11:03 am

Abdel Falah Al-Sudani, former Minister of Trade on Iraq (R) [Omar S/YouTube]

Lebanon and Jordan have agreed to hand over two former Iraqi officials who were convicted of “embezzling state funds”, Iraq’s Commission of Integrity (COI) announced yesterday.

“The Lebanese Presidency issued a decree No. 2097 on 27 December 2017, announcing the extradition of the convicted former minister of trade, Abdel Falah Al-Sudani, to the judicial authorities in the Republic of Iraq,” COI said in a statement.

COI, an independent institution affiliated to the Iraqi Parliament, added that the Iraqi and the Lebanese authorities are currently working on finalising the extradition procedures.

A court has compelled Al-Sudani based on a guilty verdict related to the offenses of “deliberate damage, breaches of duties and intentional functions, damage to public funds, and money laundering,” according to COI.

Al-Sudani, who holds British citizenship, was a member of the Islamic Dawa Party led by Prime Minister Haider Al-Abadi and the current Vice-President of Iraq, Nouri Al-Maliki. He was the education minister during the Ibrahim Al-Jaafari’s presidency in 2005, while he served as minister of commerce in Al-Maliki’s administration from 2006 to 2009.

Read: Calls for Iraq’s Abadi to prosecute members of his security team

In 2009, he was accused of “embezzling state funds” in a deal which saw the Iraqi government buy 30,000 tonnes of subsidised cooking oil which was later found not to have met quality standards. In 2012, he was sentenced to seven years in prison, a term he did not serve as he fled the country.

COI’s also announced that Jordan has agreed to hand over the former Iraqi defence official, Ziad Al-Qattan, to Baghdad.

Al-Qattan, who served as the secretary-general of the Iraqi Ministry of Defence in 2004, was arrested last February by the Jordanian police in cooperation with Interpol in Amman.

He was sentenced to seven years in absentia after he was convicted of embezzling some $1 billion in state defence contracts.

Iraq is among the world’s most corrupt countries, according to the Transparency International Index. A number of former Iraqi ministers, who fled the country, are wanted over corruption charges, according to COI.