Security forces arrested a businessman at Baghdad airport on Monday, accused of “stealing” $2.5 billion from tax authorities as he tried to leave Iraq, the interior ministry said, AFP reported.

The case, made public in mid-October, has sparked outrage in oil-rich Iraq, which is plagued by rampant corruption.

The IRS document explains that $2.5 billion was received between September 2021 and August 2022 through 247 checks cashed by five companies. Then the money was withdrawn in cash from the accounts of these companies.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs squad “arrested Noor Zuhair Jassem at Baghdad International Airport while trying to leave the country on a private plane,” Interior Minister Othman al-Ghanemi said in a statement.

The government’s anti-corruption body named the suspect as “the general director (…) of an oil service company, one of the people involved in the case involving deposits belonging to the tax administration,” according to another statement released on Monday.

Law enforcement authorities have already questioned several officials of the tax administration in connection with the case and issued arrest warrants for the owners of the companies accused of receiving the money.

Despite the fact that corruption permeated all state institutions and state administration, if there are sentences in Iraq, they are often aimed at the middle echelons of the state or simple executors, rarely at the top of the pyramid.

“Widespread corruption is the main cause of dysfunction in Iraq. And frankly speaking, no leader can get away with it,” UN representative in Iraq Jeanine Gennis-Plassert said in early October.