What is the story of manipulating the budget tables and adding 15 trillion “secretly”?

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[size=52]What is the story of manipulating the budget tables and adding 15 trillion “secretly”?[/size]

[size=45]More than 80 days have passed since the parliament voted on the Iraqi budget tables for 2024, but the tables are still absent from the pages of the official Gazette of the Ministry of Justice to enter into force. The reason for this is the existence of 3 different versions of the budget tables, which appear to have been discovered only 10 days after the vote on the tables, but the matter remained hidden until it was revealed more than a month later, specifically on July 13.[/size]
[size=45]What does Parliament mean by “amended schedules” after its vote?[/size]
[size=45]On June 3, the House of Representatives voted on the 2024 budget tables, and said at the time that “the estimates of the 2024 general budget tables, its attachments, and the deficit financing tables were approved, and the Council of Ministers was granted the authority to transfer an amount of (2) trillion dinars from the investment budget allocations for the ministries and add it to the regional development allocations for the governorates not organized into a region, and it is distributed according to the population ratios and poverty rates in each governorate.”[/size]
[size=45]According to the wording of the Council’s statement using the phrase “the estimates of the tables were approved”, the statement can be read as “the tables were approved as received from the Council of Ministers”, but the statement carried the phrase “the tables of the Federal General Budget Law No. (13) of 2024, as amended, were voted on”, and it is not known what Parliament means by the term “amended”, and whether it was amended by Parliament after it was received from the Council of Ministers, or does it mean amended by the Council of Ministers compared to the 2023 budget tables, considering that it is a three-year budget?[/size]
[size=45]“The bomb explodes” after 40 days.. 15 trillion were added “secretly”[/size]
[size=45]Only a week later, on June 11, local media outlets reported statements by the spokesman for the Ministry of Justice, Ahmed Laibi, stating that “the Ministry of Justice addressed the House of Representatives to send the budget tables for publication in the Official Gazette.” At the same time, sources reported that the tables were returned from the Council of Ministers to the House of Representatives “for the purpose of conducting an audit of some articles and paragraphs of the law.”[/size]
[size=45]A month later, specifically on July 11, statements were issued by MP Baqir Al-Saadi, in which he said that there were some minor comments on the budget, so it was returned to Parliament, and amendments would be made to it by a specialized committee after the tenth of Muharram and sent to the Council of Ministers again.[/size]
[size=45]Then, only two days later, on July 13, came the first official revelation of the manipulation of the budget tables, through the member of the Parliamentary Finance Committee, Moeen Al-Kadhimi, who confirmed that the budget had been returned to the House of Representatives to make some amendments, after the Council of Ministers discovered a difference in the version of the budget sent from the House of Representatives to the Council of Ministers, despite the fact that the House of Representatives voted on the tables as they were received from the Council of Ministers without amendment, indicating that the difference raised the budget from 211 trillion dinars to 226 trillion dinars.[/size]
[size=45]It is clear from Al-Kadhimi's statement that 15 trillion dinars have been added to the budget expenditure schedule, but it is not known under which headings these amounts were added, which raise the size of expenditures by 7%.[/size]
[size=45]However, leaked information indicates that the additions included increasing the amount of the ration card by an additional 5 trillion dinars, and financial increases for the Ministry of Electricity and some governorates.[/size]
[size=45]Meanwhile, the government was not completely silent, but it delayed sending a letter of inquiry to the House of Representatives until about a month had passed. While the budget was voted on on June 3, and the budget was sent to the Council of Ministers on June 10, Al-Sudani’s office sent a letter of inquiry to the House of Representatives on July 1, but this letter was not leaked to the media until July 20.[/size]
[size=45]The book included that the House of Representatives’ decision states that the budget tables were voted on as received from the government, but the paper copy attached to the House of Representatives’ book, which confirmed “voting on the tables as received,” differs from the tables that were actually sent from the government to the House of Representatives. The electronic copy on the CD also differs from the government’s version and the paper copy sent by the House of Representatives.[/size]
[size=45]Accordingly, this means that there is a government version of the budget tables that is supposedly voted on by Parliament as is, as well as two versions, “paper and electronic,” coming from Parliament, both of which differ from the original government version that is supposedly voted on by Parliament as is.[/size]
[size=45]Leaking... a means of pressure for a late response?[/size]
[size=45]The day after the leak of the government’s letter to the parliament speaker, specifically on July 21, the speaker of parliament sent a response to the government, even though the letter of inquiry was issued by the government on July 1, and it appears that the parliament speaker did not respond during this period, which raises the possibility that the government deliberately leaked the letter after 20 days to pressure the parliament speaker for the purpose of a late response.[/size]
[size=45]The Parliament Presidency’s response letter confirmed that the tables sent to the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers are the same as those sent by the government, after approving the tables as received from the government without any change.[/size]
[size=45]About 4 MPs were shot...and then Al-Mandlawi[/size]
[size=45]Since July 20 until now, the talk about the story of tampering with the budget tables has been going on and on, and some pages have accused MP Mustafa Sand, Adi Awad, and Mohammad Nouri of tampering with the tables. Sand responded by denying his interference in this matter, indicating that what happened is that some MPs may have written “their own tables and made transfers by adding money to their governorates or other sections as suggestions,” but the decision of the parliament speaker was to vote on the tables as they came from the government, and this closes the door to any other additions by the MPs, considering that “the matter has no effect and the government has exaggerated the issue.”[/size]
[size=45]In contrast, MP Basem Khashan considered that the proven manipulation of the budget may end the membership of the acting Speaker of Parliament, Mohsen Al-Mandalawi, by filing a lawsuit before the Federal Supreme Court, as he is the one who signed the Parliament’s voting decision and the tables sent to the government.[/size]
[size=45]Meanwhile, MP Sarwa Abdul Wahid spoke about a difference in the budget tables worth 8 trillion dinars, and this number contradicts what was initially revealed by the member of the Finance Committee, Moeen Al-Kazemi, but it may be the difference number in the paper or electronic version, and the other number of 15 trillion is in one of the two versions as well, as there are 3 versions as confirmed by the Prime Minister’s Office in its letter sent to Parliament.[/size]
[size=45]The continued talk about “manipulating the budget tables” and the mention of Al-Mandlawi’s name in the story prompted the latter to issue a statement on the official website of the House of Representatives, and he returned to confirm that the tables were voted on as they were received from the government, while the statement carried clear anger, stressing through it that he “is following all the inaccurate talks published and broadcast by some media outlets,” threatening that “any party that tries to mislead public opinion by concealing the facts and dishonestly transmitting the events, to achieve illegitimate goals far from the honesty of neutral transmission and objectivity that it should possess, will be subject to legal accountability.”[/size]
[size=45]The Ministry of Finance provides the original budget tables that the government sent to the House of Representatives and which were voted on, amounting to 211 trillion dinars, while there is no published or announced version of the other modified versions that include adding 15 or 8 trillion dinars for the purpose of matching the tables, but all the talk revolves around adding money to the ration card allocations, in addition to increasing the allocations of some governorates, especially those that objected to reducing their shares in the budget, most notably Basra Governorate.[/size]
[size=45]But in conclusion, and from a realistic perspective, the difference in budget tables is worthless after the government published and approved the budget tables sent by it according to the allocations specified by it, with a total expenditure of 211.8 trillion dinars, although the Al-Waqa’i newspaper has not yet published the budget tables for the year 2024.[/size]
[size=45]The explanations in the conclusion indicate that MPs appear to have “tried to deceive the government” by including in their papers the amendments they had made in order to allocate more money to their governorates or “ministries”, using the stages and stations of the budget’s passage in parliament after the vote. Those who were able to access the version that was prepared to be sent to the Council of Ministers in its paper form, replaced a table related to governing expenditures, for example, in order to raise the share of the food budget, while the other; He included his own paper after modifying the numbers that include increasing the shares of certain governorates. As for those who were unable to access the paper copy, they were able to access the electronic section in the House of Representatives through their connections or in another way, in order to change certain numbers in the budget table on the computer before they were placed on a CD. It seems that each representative may not know what his colleague did, in order to send it to the government and try to deceive it, to spend the money according to the tables it received. It is not known what the plan is after that. Does it intend to raise the allocations for the governorates or the relevant ministries in order to empower them, or does it aim to take and share the surplus funds that may be sent to the governorates and ministries according to the manipulated tables, and grant the governorate or ministry only the funds that the government was planning to allocate to this governorate or that ministry.[/size]
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