CoI’s Office of Investigation revealed that the former Minister of Trade and former State Directors of the Ministry had been sentenced in absentia for inflicting intentional damage to the funds and interests of the party in which they were working.

The Office explained, in its talk about the details of the default judgment issued by the Criminal Court on Integrity Cases in Baghdad, that the convicted fugitives committed offenses in two contracts concluded between the State Company for Trading Grain and one of the companies for supplying Basmati rice, indicating that the value of damage to public money in the two contracts reached ($14.300.000).

The court - after reviewing the statements of the legal representative of the Ministry of Trade, who requested to file a complaint against the accused persons, the report of the External Audit Department of CoI, including the amount of damage to the public money, in addition to the report of the Board of Supreme Audit, which proved the violations in the two contracts, the administrative investigation which included the negligence of the said accused persons and the presumption of their escape – reached full conviction to convict them and sentenced each of them to seven years of imprisonment according to the provisions of Article 340 of the Penal Code in terms of Articles 47, 48 and 49 thereof.

The sentence included the issuance of an arrest warrant against the convicts and conducting the legal inspection on them in order to arrest them, as well as certifying the attachment of their movable and immovable property and the right of the damaged party (Ministry of Trade) to seek compensation before the civil courts.

CoI had announced on 18/11/2015 the results of the work of its field teams in a number of ministries, including the Ministry of Trade, resulting in the transfer of files of those ministries to justice which consequently issued arrest warrants, subpoenas and travel bans against senior officials in those ministries.