The Integrity Commission begins auditing retirees’ files and reveals more than 16,000 deceased individuals whose salaries are still being paid.
The Integrity Commission begins auditing retirees’ files and reveals more than 16,000 deceased individuals whose salaries are still being paid.
8-21-2026
Information/Baghdad..
The Federal Integrity Commission announced on Friday that it has begun auditing the files of retirees and cross-referencing the data of the National Retirement Authority, explaining that working committees headed by it and with the membership of the Federal Financial Control Bureau, the Martyrs Foundation, the National Retirement Authority and the Ministry of Interior were formed for this purpose, after the approval of Prime Minister Ali Al-Zidi.
The commission stated in a report received by Al-Maalomah Agency that “the committees will begin cross-referencing the data of the National Retirement Authority, after correcting and matching it with the data in all electronic payment companies related to retirees’ salaries, in order to determine the amounts of money that were obtained without entitlement, and to take legal action to recover them.”
He added that “the commission has prepared a report on the National Retirement Authority, and has sent a copy of it to the office of the Prime Minister, the Ministry of Finance and the National Retirement Authority, which included a number of recommendations, including the formation of committees to audit the files of retirees, cross-referencing the data of the National Retirement Authority, and supervising the linking of an electronic platform for the retirees of the Martyrs Foundation with the National Retirement Authority.”
The report identified “the existence of approximately (40,000) forty thousand Key Card (fingerprint) cards issued based on old data and the data on which the Retirement Authority’s database is based has not been updated, despite the Integrity Commission’s call several months ago to update retirees’ data and prevent the duplication of retirement numbers for the same retiree.”
He pointed out that “a committee was formed by a decree based on its recommendations to undertake the task of auditing the names of retirees from among the martyrs and victims of terrorism within the Nineveh Governorate, whose number is (102,867) names, in order to preserve public funds. The committee began its work by cross-referencing the data of the Martyrs Foundation with the data that had been previously provided to the Retirement Authority, based on which retirement salaries were issued, and it revealed that retirement salaries were disbursed to those who were not entitled to them, as a result of the National Retirement Authority not requesting the retiree’s data from the Martyrs Foundation.”
He explained: “The importance of inventorying and cross-referencing the names that have not been suspended since the year (2022) in the National Retirement Authority with the minutes received from the Martyrs Foundation regarding the suspension decisions, in order to reach the fictitious names that receive salaries without right, through the joint committee formed to remove the duplicate names, indicating that there are large numbers whose salaries have not been suspended since the formation of the committees in the year (2022), stressing that the work of the committees includes a monthly achievement of the number of those suspended since their formation.”
The report noted that “the Ministry of Interior sent the information of a large number of citizens to the National Pension Authority, who have incomplete information in the Pension Authority’s database, and detected deliberate errors in the data and information of some retirees when entering it into the database of the operating systems. These errors were committed by the branches and departments of the Pension Authority, some of whose directors were found to be involved in corruption cases, especially in the governorates where terrorist acts occurred. This requires correcting that data in coordination with the relevant authorities, and preventing those who are not entitled to receive pension salaries in violation of the law.”
He addressed the “Retirement Authority’s coordination with the Ministry of Health and the National Center for Digital Transformation to verify the existence of (16,384) deceased individuals whose pension payments were not stopped by conducting a data cross-referencing process, despite the absence of eligible beneficiaries. He pointed out the lack of information regarding the names of retirees in the Authority’s database in Baghdad and the governorates, which caused significant financial waste, as there are approximately (19,321) thousand records that were stopped only in Anbar Governorate. He noted the weakness of the Retirement Authority’s database, which did not request all the correct decisions issued by the Martyrs Foundation, especially the liberated governorates, to be cross-referenced with its data.”
The report continued, stating that “the Pension Authority’s databases are deficient and contain deliberate errors in recording retirees’ data, particularly in liberated areas, resulting in the disbursement of pensions to ineligible individuals. This is due to the Authority’s failure to request complete retiree data from the Martyrs Foundation, as well as the lack of committees to cross-reference incoming data. Furthermore, the Authority has not initiated electronic archiving of files to identify lost or damaged documents, nor has it established an electronic platform for Martyrs Foundation retirees with the Pension Authority. This would mitigate suspicions of corruption and eliminate the phenomenon of multiple records for the same original retiree, each with a different pension number and the same number and date of the terrorism victims’ decision issued by the Martyrs Foundation, with a separate pension being received for each number.”
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