Qi Card: Pension Fund and Rafidain Bank money lent through Qi Card, IQD 5.91 trillion to about 847,000 borrowers (from 2017 to 2021)

In November 2017 Rafidain Bank, the State Employees' Pension Fund and International Smart Card (Qi Card) agreed to lend to state employees and pensioners through Qi Card's card system. A Finance Ministry audit committee (report of 8 February 2021, its recommendations ratified by the Minister) found that by January 2021 about IQD 5.91 trillion had been lent to about 847,000 borrowers from two portfolios, one financed with IQD 2.25 trillion of the Pension Fund's money and the other with Rafidain's own funds. It recorded as violations that the portfolios were opened and fed without the bank board's approval and with no agreement fixing the bank's and the company's rights and duties, that the Fund's Director General signed no financing contract, that IQD 500 billion was withdrawn from the pension portfolio in October 2020 without the Fund board's approval, and that IQD 120.25 billion of interest due to the Fund sat in a Rafidain suspense account. Arrears stood at about IQD 94.9 billion. The Federal Board of Supreme Audit (letter and report of 20 April 2021) found that the commissions were shared with the company although it invested nothing, that about IQD 8 billion of insurance premiums owed to the state insurer had not been paid, and that IQD 2.08 billion went to a private Erbil insurer by cheques made out to a company employee. These are administrative audit findings, not court judgments; the audit bodies' papers came to light in the file of Committee 29, whose founding order the Federal Supreme Court later annulled. The press reported in July 2021 that a Karkh anti-corruption court sentenced the company's founder and two others to three years for embezzlement.