Corruption at Iraq's Sunni Endowment Diwan: bribery, an inflated property purchase and a hotel-acquisition case (from 2010 to 2023)

Iraq's Sunni Endowment Diwan, the state body managing Sunni religious properties and trusts, has faced repeated corruption findings against successive heads and officials. Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samarrai, who headed the Diwan from July 2005, was accused in January 2010 by a parliamentary integrity-committee member of turning the Umm al-Qura Mosque compound into a private residence and building a five-star hotel and residential complex costing about $5m; his deputy called this baseless. The Council of Ministers removed him in November 2013, and by November 2014 Iraq's judiciary had issued 16 arrest warrants against him; he was released on bail. In December 2020 Baghdad's Karkh Criminal Court convicted him in absentia and sentenced him to 15 years for intentionally damaging Diwan funds by causing it to buy real estate for IQD 6.766bn, more than three times the IQD 2.107bn the Land Registration Directorate assessed as its real value, in breach of Iraq's Property Acquisition Law. He reportedly died abroad in 2024 without serving the sentence. Separately, in March 2013 the Commission on Integrity arrested another Diwan official, saying it had video evidence he took a $250,000 bribe from investors for use of the Diwan-owned Sara Khatoun Palace; and in April 2023, after a fresh arrest, the Central Corruption Crimes Court convicted a further former head of the Diwan and sentenced him to four years for directing the purchase of the Armada Hotel in the Kurdistan Region without economic justification and forfeiting a legal appeal, benefiting the hotel's owners at the state's expense. The Diwan's own Inspector General said in September 2017 that it had referred 23 financial and administrative corruption cases to the Integrity Commission and courts, with 18 judicial rulings already issued.