Babil Health Directorate: former director general Nawras Abd al-Razzaq Abd al-Shahid, 12 in-absentia sentences and return from the UAE (from 2017 to 2024)

On 5 August 2024 the Federal Integrity Commission said the United Arab Emirates had handed over Nawras Abd al-Razzaq Abd al-Shahid, a former director general of the Babil Health Directorate who had also run al-Imamain al-Kadhimain hospital in Baghdad. Courts in Hilla, Karkh and Rusafa had given him 12 in-absentia sentences under Articles 331 and 340 of the Penal Code, about 28 years in all. The Commission listed among the offences: 700 appointments and other hirings outside the rules; overpriced printing; raising payments to the Jordanian company carrying out the national haemodialysis project by more than USD 6 million although it was behind schedule; buying CRRT machines without a request; and buying liquid oxygen from private plants at inflated prices although a state company offered lower ones. UAE police had arrested him in February 2023. Separately, a judicial source told Shafaq News in June 2021 that the Babil integrity court had sentenced the then director, Mohammed al-Jaafari, to six months over about USD 5 million, and in October 2021 the Commission reported a prison sentence, in person, for the directorate's director general over payments to the dialysis company.