D.C. Lawmakers May Have To Request Emergency Sanctions  

(FreedomBeacon.com)- An analyst writing for the defense and national security website 19FortyFive claims that D.C. lawmakers and President Joe Biden should impose sanctions to those who are diverting state funds away from Iraq. Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, observes that Iraq is now a peaceful place exhausted by war and violence.  

As Iraq rebuilds its public sentiment from the war of twenty years ago that left the country experiencing daily bombings, they are less likely to care about the ethnicity of their uber drivers. But while violence is no longer a problem, they are still experiencing corruption.  

The United States reportedly viewed the former Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi as a pro-Western liberal standing up to Iran, but the people of Iraq felt differently. Kadhimi was the subject of fierce scrutiny and now, he and his closest aides, are under investigation led by Prime Minister Muhammad Shia’ al-Sudani.  

While Iraq was reportedly undergoing a couple years of turmoil and looking ahead to their October 2021 elections, they experienced one of the largest tax embezzlement schemes within their country, according to The Guardian. $2.5 billion was withdrawn from shell companies without any paper trail. While citizens suspect that Kadhimi had something to do with it, they are unsure.  

Rubin suggests that Biden can play a role in this scandal and impose Global Magnitsky Act sanctions to whomever was involved in the scheme. Previous administrations have imposed these sanctions for other reasons as well, including human rights abuses. In 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo designated Iraqi militia leaders who committed abuses against minority communities under the act.  

The Biden administration also applied the act to Paraguay’s former president and current vice president for similar financial schemes whose amounts were far less than that embezzled in Iraq under Kadhimi.