Saturday 19 September 2009

The secret middleman and Salih

The first scandal for the Minister of Natural Resources in Iraq's self-ruled Kurdistan Regional Government, Ashti A. Hawrami, has just come to surface, a report by Bloomberg News reveals.

The Sept. 18 report says that a probe by Oslo Stock Exchange found that Hawrami was the secret middleman in a transaction of 43 million DNO International shares last year. And the transaction was arranged between Hawrami and DNO Chief Executive Officer Helge Eide.

That simply helps to understand Hawrami's underground deals with the international companies that have secured lucrative deals in northern Iraq on no-bid basis. I'm sure that there will be more to come in the coming days or months or years about this man and his vague deals.

According to a Sept. 6 report by Reuters, Hawrami was expected to be reappointed in the yet-to-be-formed new KRG government by former Kurdish deputy prime minister, Dr. Barham Salih.

Salih now faces his first exam.

kassakhoon@gmail.com





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