Biometric payroll system unveils widespread fraud in Iraqi Kurdistan

Iraqi Kurdistan starts registering employees with biometric payment system. Photo: NRT

HEWLÊR-Erbil, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— Over 700,000 people who are currently on the Kurdish government’s payroll have so far registered in the electronic payment system, which is designed to reduce corruption in workplaces and enhance transparency in Iraqi Kurdistan region, officials said Tuesday.

The biometric registration of employees, which was launched on October 10 and will continue until February 10, has revealed “large scale misuse and fraud,” in some cases involving private persons receiving up to 5 wages from the government, according to one government unnamed official told Rudaw network, which is close to KDP and Kurdistan PM Nechirvan Barzani.

The mandatory electronic system is expected to reduce the number of ghost workers who do not actually work but are paid by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) through falsification of personnel or payroll records.

The system is designed to prevent individual employees from receiving more than one salary, effectively limiting fraud and mismanagement of public assets, authorities have said.

“For the first time we have reliable statistics about the number of people on the government payroll, which will be the base for our future decisions,” Kurdish Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani told his cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

Government data show that nearly 1.4 million people are officially employed by the KRG, consuming an estimated 70 percent of its overstretched annual budget.

The new payment system is modern banking technology that uses biometric authentication to identify the user and authorize the payment through a bank account verified by fingerprint scanning.

The payment reform is part of larger austerity measures that the KRG has struggled to implement in collaboration with the World Bank to tackle the ongoing financial crisis that has gripped its economy since early 2014. The economic reforms have caused outrage across the Kurdistan Region with several riots and strikes.

Earlier this year, KRG spokesperson Safeen Dizayee revealed that only an estimated 740,000 employees among the 1.4 million who are on the KRG’s payroll are doing actual work, with the rest of the salaries going to ghost workers or employees that receive more than one salary which he said had burdened the government’s total expenses.

The KRG hopes the new electronic system will prevent mismanagement of public assets and reduce rising unemployment in the country.

Kurdistan considered as the most corrupted part of Iraq. According to Kurdish opposition lawmakers billions of dollars are missing from Iraqi Kurdistan’s oil revenues. The Kurdistan’s Ministry of Natural Resources has rebutted those accusations as unfounded.

Senior KRG officials including Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani have long been routinely accused by the opposition and observers of corruption or taking government money.

Barzani and Talabani families and their relatives, control a large number of commercial enterprises in Iraqi Kurdistan, with a gross value of several billion US dollars. The two families are routinely accused of corruption and nepotism by Kurdish media as well as international observers.

Until now no one has been sentenced over corruption in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Iraq has repeatedly topped the list of the least transparent nations in the past decade.

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