US seeks to seize Barzani mansion over alleged $30M fraud

WASHINGTON,— The U.S. Department of Justice is seeking to seize a Beverly Hills mansion linked to Mansour Barzani, a Kurdish general and brother of Iraqi Kurdistan Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, in a case alleging he used $30 million in corrupt proceeds from U.S. military contracts to buy and renovate the property, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) reported.

The Justice Department filed a civil forfeiture complaint this week, dated April 22, which OCCRP obtained.

The complaint identifies the property as a secluded home on Foothill Road, an affluent, tree-lined residential street in Beverly Hills.

A real estate agent has listed the home as Foothill Manor, a French-style villa featuring a private theater, a swimming pool, and European gardens.

Prosecutors alleged that Barzani accepted bribes from a Virginia-based contractor in exchange for granting that company exclusive rights to supply jet fuel at Erbil International Airport in Iraqi Kurdistan from 2016 to 2020.

The airport, controlled by Kurdish Peshmerga forces, served as a key fuel delivery point for U.S. military operations in Iraq and Syria under Operation Inherent Resolve.

The Justice Department said in a press statement that officers of the contractor agreed to pay Barzani, identified as a senior Peshmerga official, a bribe of $0.25 per liter for exclusive fuel delivery access for U.S. military and coalition forces.

The Defense Logistics Agency, a branch of the Department of Defense, awarded that Virginia-based contractor contracts worth more than $700 million between 2015 and 2023, according to the complaint.

The complaint refers to the company only as “Contractor 1,” but contract numbers cited in the filing identify it as DGCI, a Virginia-based logistics firm.

A 2017 memo from the Kurdish regional government named only three companies approved to deliver fuel to Erbil airport: DGCI, its Kurdish subcontractor Triple Arrow, and a Kurdistan-based firm called Rainfloods.

With that exclusive access secured, DGCI billed the U.S. government as much as $10 per gallon for jet fuel. Defense Department guidelines show the standard price paid between 2016 and 2020 ranged from $2.14 to $3.20 per gallon.

Barzani family house in U.S. Location: Beverly Hills, Calif.Price: $47 million Size: 20,829 square feet and 11,838 square feet. Photo: dirt.com

A message from a contractor cited in court documents remarked on the striking markup, saying it was pretty crazy that the company was delivering fuel in Syria and Iraq at more than $10 per gallon, and questioning what competing firms must have been thinking.

OCCRP said it contacted the Kurdistan Regional Government’s permanent representative in Washington and sent requests for comment to representatives of Mansour Barzani and DGCI. None of the three parties responded before publication.

Mansour and Masrour Barzani are sons of Massoud Barzani, who led Peshmerga fighters against Saddam Hussein’s government during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s and later became the founding president of Iraqi Kurdistan.

A composite image shows Massoud Barzani (back) and his five sons, from left to right, Waysi, Masrour, Mustafa (Babo), Muksi, and Mansour, 2000s. Photo: iKurd.net

The Foothill Road property is not the only U.S. real estate tied to the family.

A separate OCCRP investigation published last year found that Mansour Barzani, Prime Minister Masrour Barzani, and their three other brothers used anonymous shell companies registered in Delaware and the British Virgin Islands to acquire more than $100 million in U.S. properties.

Those purchases also included luxury goods and Arabian horses. Investigators found that tens of millions of dollars behind those transactions came from Kurdish conglomerates with interests in both oil and military contracting.

The Barzani clan, which rules Iraqi Kurdistan, has long faced accusations from critics and observers of corruption, nepotism and of amassing vast wealth from the oil sector for family benefit rather than serving the broader population.

(With files from Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) occrp.org)