Endemic Corruption Is Suffocating Iraq’s Oil Boom

Last week’s agreement by the London-based oil and gas company TechnipFMC to pay US$5.1 million to settle an Iraq-related corruption case with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) again highlights the endemic corruption that has crippled Iraq over the years. However, it is just a drop in an ocean of dirty money that flows from Baghdad in the south and Erbil in the north and then out to a variety of secret bank accounts held by senior politicians and their cronies (see). TechnipFMC is the product of a 2017 merger between Technip…