Last week’s agreement by the London-based oil and gas company TechnipFMC to pay US$5.1 million to settle an Iraq-related corruption case with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) again highlights the endemic corruption that has crippled Iraq over the years. However, it is just a drop in an ocean of dirty money that flows from Baghdad in the south and Erbil in the north and then out to a variety of secret bank accounts held by senior politicians and their cronies (see). TechnipFMC is the product of a 2017 merger between Technip and FMC Technologies but the company has now announced plans to split itself again into two companies, as so often happens when historical obfuscation of previous misdemeanours is the true objective. This case revolves around alleged bribery to have taken place between 2008 and 2013. The documents presented in court sufficiently established that over that period, […]