Bribery and fake-produce racket at Iraqi Grain Board wheat-collection silos

An Al Jazeera investigation published in June 2020 found that farmers delivering wheat to Iraqi Grain Board silos nationwide were routinely made to pay bribes to silo staff to have their crop weighed, graded and accepted, with produce sometimes falsely rejected for 'defects' to extort payment. The same investigation described a parallel scheme in which wholesalers bought wheat cheaply from farmers, or brought in cheap wheat from the Kurdistan Region and neighbouring countries, then resold it to silos under farmers' names at the higher government-guaranteed price, splitting the margin with silo staff; the Grain Board's general manager, Abdelrahman Aji Toufan, denied systemic bribery but acknowledged about 10 employees under investigation across some 50 silos. Six years later, in July 2026, Iraq's Federal Commission of Integrity arrested the head and two members of the 'direct implementation committee' at the State Company for Grain Trading's Amarah (Maysan) silo for allegedly imposing unauthorised fees on farmers for loading, unloading and cleaning services the state had already funded.