ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The head of the Kurdistan Region’s Commission of Integrity said on Wednesday that the anti-corruption body has received several reports of major corruption cases just one day after it announced financial rewards for whistleblowers, with efforts underway to determine the scale of compensation.
“Since yesterday, we have received three to four reports regarding major corruption cases, but we are currently waiting to receive the evidence,” Ahmed Anwar, head of the Commission, told Rudaw’s Sangar Abdulrahman, adding that the public response to the initiative has been “very positive” across all provinces of the Kurdistan Region.
The Commission on Tuesday said that financial rewards would be granted to employees and citizens who provide verified information about corruption or legal violations within government institutions. Authorities emphasized that whistleblowers’ identities would remain confidential and that their rights would be protected.
“The reward offered for exposing corruption cases must be proportional to the scale of the corruption involved,” Anwar added, noting that coordination is underway with Iraq’s Federal Commission of Integrity and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to “develop clear guidelines for determining the amount of such rewards.”
The initiative comes amid growing concerns over financial crimes in the Kurdistan Region.
A joint report by the UNDP and the Kurdistan Region’s judicial authority in December 2025 found that the average value of corruption cases reviewed by courts had risen sharply, from 622 million Iraqi dinars to 4.5 billion dinars ($475,000 to $34.4 million) per case. The report added that half of the newly reviewed cases involved public institutions, including the ministries of higher education, interior and health.
A source within the Commission told Rudaw English on Tuesday that the rewards are intended to help uncover cases of bribery, embezzlement, illicit enrichment, misappropriation of public funds and other forms of corruption.
Noting that the anti-corruption body refers up to 250 corruption cases to courts annually, Anwar explained that “anyone can report corruption cases and submit evidence through our hotline at 1015 or via email” and urged the public to cooperate in efforts to “safeguard public funds.”
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has in recent years introduced a number of measures to combat financial crimes, including the establishment of a specialized criminal court in Erbil in 2024 dedicated to handling major corruption cases and the exclusion of grand corruption offenses from general amnesty laws.
Despite this, Anwar argues that broader institutional reforms are needed to strengthen anti-corruption efforts.
“The state of the rule of law in the Kurdistan Region must certainly improve and the regional parliament must resume its work," he said, adding that "the judiciary in the Kurdistan Region still clearly operates under a political shadow.”
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