Iraq, Saudi Arabia sign Memorandum of Understanding to combat corruption

Iraq and Saudi Arabia have signed a Memorandum of Understanding to combat corruption, amid an ongoing drive to tackle such practices in the region.

According to the Saudi Press Agency (SPA), Iraq’s Commission of Integrity (COI) and Saudi Arabia’s Oversight and Anti-Corruption Authority (Nazaha) on Thursday last week signed a Memorandum of Understanding to enhance their joint efforts to tackle corruption.

The Memorandum was signed at the Arab Forum of Anti-Corruption Agencies and Financial Intelligence Units held in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, with the signatories being Nazaha’s president, Mazin Bin Ibrahim Al-Kahmous, and the head of the COI, Haidar Hanoun.

As part of the Memorandum, Riyadh and Baghdad agreed to strengthen cooperation in the fight against transnational corruption offenses, to improve their institutional capacities, and to enhance the ease with which to communicate relevant data between the institutions.

The agreement comes at a time when both countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, have focused much of their efforts on tackling corruption within their governments and within the wider region. That drive has seen hundreds of people from numerous government and financial institutions arrested on a regular basis throughout the Kingdom, leading many human rights activists to speculate on whether many of such arrests are purely on suspicion of corruption.

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