Makki Hassan, a member of the municipal council in the western Hamzah area, 30 kilometers (18 miles) south of Babylon, told Al-Monitor, “The money allocated for projects is sufficient in most cases. But passing the money through intermediaries and chain contractors reduces effective spending on the project to no more than 20% of the original amount.”
Abdul-Zahra al-Hindawi, spokesman for the Ministry of Planning, said in remarks to the media last Sept. 14 that Iraq needs to enact a law to forbid secondary contracts on strategic projects, as this hinders the implementation of development plans. He further said, “Many companies are unable to implement the projects assigned to it, because they do not have the required capacities.” This, he said, is also corruption.
The Iraqi author Hussein Husseini told Al-Monitor, “Corruption in infrastructure projects is widely linked to political corruption, and political officials are often directly involved in it.” He explained, “Contracting projects in Iraq are investment projects monopolized by a group of parties and influential people in power. They finance themselves through these contracts, while each party covers for the other.”
Husseini, who writes on Iraqi affairs in Baghdad, stated, “The contracting process goes through several stages of coordination and planning among influential officials and contractors. The first step is starting the contracting as well as securing the money for it. The amount is then doubled in order to make room for bribery, embezzlement and manipulation.”
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