The decree, issued in the official Kuwait Al-Youm gazette, stripped the citizenship of two Kuwaiti-Iraqi dual nationals whose names were mentioned in August in connection with the case in Iraq.
An investigation by the Iraqi finance ministry in October 2022 concluded that over $2.5 billion (about 3.7 trillion dinars) in tax funds were stolen from a bank by five companies during the tenure of former finance minister Ali Allawi.
The primary suspect in the heist, businessman Noor Zuhair Jassim, was due to appear in court in mid-August but did not show up. Arrest warrants have also been issued for Allawi and staff members of former prime minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani said in November 2022 that Jassim admitted to embezzling a sum of 1.618 trillion dinars (over $1.1 billion).
The government has said some of the funds have been recovered, but the majority remains missing.
Rampant corruption plagues all levels of the Iraqi state. The country ranks as the joint tenth most corrupt nation in the world, according to Transparency International’s annual corruption index.
