Corruption? Iraq? You have to be kidding

Hey, this is all he said/she said for now, but it should be interesting drama:

Iraq's top anticorruption watchdog, a high-profile judge whose efforts have been hailed by Americans as one of the few bright spots in the country, is himself the target of a corruption probe, officials said Saturday.

Judge Radhi Radhi, head of Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity, is under investigation by court authorities, accused of turning his 1,700-employee agency into a personal fiefdom and padding his salary with an extra $50,000 a year.

Radhi denies the charges, arguing that they're part of a campaign of intimidation by government officials to quash his investigations, which include examinations of corruption in ministries controlled by Iraq's dominant Shiite Muslim parties.

He said he has come under pressure to shut down his commission or cede its independent status. The government has ignored his requests for information, threatened his legal mandate and demanded he halt his investigations, said Radhi, who is a Shiite, but secular.

"They tell me, 'You are not a ministry to be giving us orders,' " he said in an interview Saturday. "There are voices among them who say there is no need for this commission."

Lawmakers have threatened not only to remove Radhi from his post for alleged incompetence, but to prosecute him for corruption, as detailed in an Oct. 29 affidavit submitted to the Supreme Judicial Council.

"I don't want him to be just removed from his post, I want him to be punished according to the law," said Sheik Sabah Saadi, a Shiite lawmaker who heads the parliamentary anti-corruption committee and has spearheaded the efforts against Radhi. "We have found financial and administrative corruption inside the integrity commission."

(via truthout)