VOA News Sunday, August 29th, 2010
The head of Iraq’s customs authority said Sunday it had recovered 90 percent of the U.S.-donated computer equipment worth $1.9 million that was intended for Iraqi schoolchildren but auctioned off by a senior Iraqi official.
Nawfal Saleem said authorities had canceled the sale and were sending the shipment back to the southern port of Umm Qasr, where it had been auctioned. He said, however, that the equipment was sold off legally because it had sat in the port for more than 90 days, and items not claimed within three months can be legally confiscated and publicly auctioned.
The U.S. military said last week that an Iraqi official had sold the equipment for less than $50,000 on August 16. It said the shipment should have gone to schools in Babil province, south of Baghdad, and called for an investigation into the incident.
The Iraqi customs authority said it did not know that the shipment belonged to the U.S. military and was destined for schoolchildren.
Widespread corruption has been a major problem for Iraq. The corruption watchdog organization Transparency International rated Iraq among the top three most corrupt countries in 2008, just behind Somalia and alongside Burma.
Some information in this story was provided by AFP and Reuters.
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