Counter-Terrorism Service sealed every entrance to Baghdad’s Green Zone and moved with military precision through the residential compounds within. When the sun rose, 47 people were in custody. Among them: twelve sitting members of parliament, a former governor, a senior adviser to the outgoing prime minister, and an array of oil ministry officials.

The trigger was the confession of Adnan al-Jumaili, the Deputy Oil Minister for Refining Affairs, detained the previous month on corruption charges. Investigators say al-Jumaili’s testimony, accompanied by the prior seizure of more than $85 million in public funds, implicated an entire ecosystem of officials in schemes to misappropriate state revenues. The Commission of Integrity issued the warrants. Several suspects fled before security forces reached them; the Green Zone was locked down to prevent further escapes.

A security official quoted by Arab News was blunt: “What has happened today is only the simple beginning”.

“Between 2003 and 2020, Iraq lost more than $600 billion to financial and administrative corruption.” — Former Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, March 2023

“Between 2003 and 2020, Iraq lost more than $600 billion to financial and administrative corruption.”

— Former Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, March 2023

To understand the scale of what the arrests represent, one must first reckon with the arithmetic of plunder. Iraq sits atop the world’s fifth-largest proven oil reserves, some 145 billion barrels. Since 2003, oil revenues have exceeded $1.2 trillion. Former Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi confirmed that by 2020, more than $600 billion of that wealth had been lost to corruption. Independent analysts estimate that at roughly $35 billion stolen per year since then, the cumulative losses now approach $776 billion.

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And yet, in the summer of 2025, as temperatures climbed to 50 degrees across southern Iraq, the country’s power grid could produce only 28,000 megawatts against a peak demand of 55,000 megawatts.

In August 2025, the........

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