Kirkuk's Integrity Court issued an arrest warrant June 16 for Rakan Saeed al-Jabouri, the acting governor of Kirkuk, on charges of corruption, including wasting 950 million Iraqi dinars in public funds allocated for reconstruction in areas retaken from Islamic State (IS) control.

The multiethnic and oil-rich city of Kirkuk, 145 miles north of Baghdad, is an area disputed between the Iraqi federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution requires the final status of Kirkuk and other areas in dispute between the two governments to be resolved in a referendum to determine whether they will remain part of federal Iraq or the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region.

After IS controlled much of northern and western Iraq in 2014 and Iraqi troops withdrew, Kurdish peshmerga forces filled the gap and took control of Kirkuk and other disputed areas. Iraqi forces expelled Kurdish forces from the city in October 2017 following the independence referendum in September that also included Kirkuk. Jabouri, an Arab, was appointed by Baghdad as acting governor after it retook the province, and Kirkuk's former governor, Najmadin Karim, a Kurd, fled the city.

Dilan Ghafoor, a member of the Iraqi Council of Representatives from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), raised the case against Jabouri last February. She addressed the Federal Board of Supreme Audit of Iraq and the Iraqi Commission of Integrity (COI), which issued to her a detailed report on the one-year expenses of Jabouri’s guesthouse in Kirkuk.