Iraqi PM Ali Al Zaidi establishes supreme sovereign council for integrity

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Falih al-Zaidi ordered the immediate establishment of the Supreme Sovereign Council for Integrity, Oversight, and Asset Recovery during a specialized high-level anti-corruption summit on Saturday, May 30, 2026. The landmark administrative decree marks a major structural escalation in the new cabinet’s domestic policy agenda to combat systemic corruption, stop the bleeding of state funds, and enforce transparency across all public sector projects.

According to an official statement issued by the Prime Minister’s media office and received by the Iraqi News Agency (INA), al-Zaidi chaired a critical assembly focusing on the rigorous auditing of state procurement procedures. The meeting brought together the nation’s top judicial and oversight chiefs, including the President of the Federal Board of Supreme Audit (BSA), the Head of the Federal Integrity Commission, the Chief Public Prosecutor, and the presiding judge of the Karkh Investigative Court specializing in public integrity cases.

The newly formed council is designed as a centralized oversight body possessing sweeping regulatory authorities over all government entities. The organizational framework of the council includes the following parameters:

• Executive Leadership: The council will be chaired directly by Prime Minister Ali Falih al-Zaidi, providing it with direct executive authority.
• Core Membership: The core board will feature the President of the Federal Board of Supreme Audit and the Head of the Federal Integrity Commission, bridging the gaps between financial auditing and active criminal investigation.
• Target Scope: The council is mandated to conduct comprehensive, forensic oversight reviews across all central ministries, non-ministerial state entities, and provincial governorate administrations.
• Core Objective: The body will isolate and investigate “substantive, high-impact issues” to halt the ongoing waste of public funds and aggressively track down and recover stolen state assets.
• Judicial Pipeline: To ensure strict compliance with the rule of law, all investigative findings, forensic reports, and evidence dossiers compiled by the council will be directly funneled to the Iraqi judiciary for immediate prosecution.

Beyond trailing stolen assets retrospectively, the Prime Minister introduced a preventative regulatory framework to check government spending before it occurs.

Al-Zaidi mandated the formation of a permanent central committee comprising representatives from the Federal Board of Supreme Audit, the Integrity Commission, and the Ministry of Finance. This inter-agency committee is tasked with engineering a mandatory pre-clearance mechanism to audit and vet all state contracts before they are formally signed. The vetting process will verify that every proposed contract matches legally approved state budgetary allocations and conforms strictly to active procurement laws.

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المصدر: Iraqi News