Zeenews Bureau
Baghdad: Amidst corruption speculations the Iraqi government has quashed its $4.2bn (£2.6bn) arms deal with Russia, as per BBC.
Iraq had plans to buy armaments from Russia which included fighter aircrafts and missiles and the deal was signed in October.
Owing to growing insurgency in the country, Iraq was in the process of strengthening the arsenal of its Army. But now it turns out that Prime Minister Nouri Maliki doubts the transparency of the deal and feels that there are corrupt practices within his own team.
As per a Russian military expert, the scrapping of arms deal was under the direct influence of Washington on Iraq.
One Russian military expert has suggested that Iraqi authorities scuppered the Russian arms deal under pressure from Washington.
A spokesperson in this regard said "when Maliki returned from his trip to Russia, he had some suspicions of corruption, so he decided to review the whole deal", as reported by BBC.
"There is an investigation going on, on this," he added.
