Article 96 Fines, Premises Closure and Confiscation Under Iraqi Law

1. Key takeaways

Yes, there are. Article 96, first paragraph, of Public Health Law No. 89 of 1981 (as replaced by Law No. 54 of 2001) provides that whoever violates this law or the regulations, instructions or announcements issued under it is liable to an immediate fine not exceeding 250,000 Iraqi dinars, or closure of the premises for a period not exceeding 90 days, or both, by decision of the Minister or the Minister’s delegate. Item (b) empowers the health supervision authority to confiscate goods prohibited from circulation in the local market or illegally entered into the country; item (c) empowers it, in cases of repeated violation of the health conditions or absence of a licence, to confiscate the materials, equipment, tools and machines used to produce, process or prepare the goods concerned. The word for apparatus in item (c) points to the production and processing equipment for foodstuffs, cosmetics and detergents, not medical devices — this is the point most easily mis-cited in the whole article.

• Three penalties in an or relationship: an immediate fine capped at 250,000 dinars, closure capped at 90 days, or both, decided administratively.
• Item (b) covers confiscation of prohibited or illegally entered goods; item (c) covers confiscation of production equipment.
• The apparatus in item (c) belongs to food, cosmetics and detergent production equipment, not medical devices.

2. Legal basis

Source level: primary source, verified. — https://faolex.fao.org/docs/pdf/irq149622.pdf

Excerpts of the provision:

• Article 96, first paragraph (item a): the owner of a premises subject to licensing or health supervision who violates the provisions of this law or the regulations, instructions or announcements issued under it is punished with an immediate fine not exceeding 250,000 (two hundred and fifty thousand) dinars, or closure of the premises for a period not exceeding 90 (ninety) days, or both, by decision of the Minister or the Minister’s delegate.
• Item (c) of the same article: in case of repeated violation of the health conditions or failure to obtain the licence, confiscation of the materials, apparatus, equipment, tools and machines used for the manufacture, processing and preparation of foodstuffs, cosmetics and detergents.

3. Expert insights

Insight 1 | The three penalties stand in an or relationship, and the decision rests with the executive branch. Item (a) writes the fine cap, the closure cap and the both-combined option as a menu that the Minister or the Minister’s delegate may select from; the whole chain does not pass through judicial procedure. The very wording of immediate fine shows that it is an on-the-spot administrative penalty decided on the spot. By comparison, Article 109 of the EU MDR leaves the design and application of penalties to the legislation of each member state, with no unified amount at EU level; Iraq wrote the fine cap and the closure days directly into the body of federal law, a rare give-it-in-the-code approach in comparative law.

Insight 2 | The fine is not the point; closure and confiscation are. 250,000 dinars is not high in absolute terms. What really bites is the closure of up to 90 days and the equipment confiscation of item (c). For the operator, the loss structure is inventory locked for 90 days, plus contract breach, plus affected tender eligibility; the severity of this combination far exceeds the fine itself. When GRZAN quantifies risk, it ranks the fine as the lowest item.

Insight 3 | The addressee of the penalty is the premises, not the product. The subject of item (a) is the owner of the premises, qualified as being subject to licensing or health supervision. This means Article 96 operates on warehouses, pharmacies, clinics, the office and storage premises of Scientific Bureaus and their holders, and produces no direct product-level consequence such as withdrawing the marketing eligibility of a particular model. Only with this understood can one explain why enforcement in Iraqi practice takes the form of sealing warehouses and posting seals, rather than delisting a particular model.

Insight 4 | Falsification check: the apparatus of item (c) is not medical devices. The circulating claim is that Article 96 of Iraqi law allows the confiscation of nonconforming medical devices. The error lies in the grammar of the sentence: the word for apparatus stands parallel with materials, equipment, tools and machines, and all of them are qualified by the purpose clause used for the manufacture, processing and preparation of foodstuffs, cosmetics and detergents. The entire reach of item (c) is production-side processing equipment, a classic food-hygiene and cosmetics provision. To read it as a confiscation basis aimed at medical devices is to discard the grammatical premise of the whole sentence.

Insight 5 | Confiscation can be chained with the destruction of Article 26 into one disposal chain. Item (b) targets goods prohibited from circulation in the local market or illegally entered; item (c) targets production equipment. Joined with Article 26 (see article 41 of this series) — nonconforming means destruction or return — Iraq forms a complete disposal chain running from port rejection to market confiscation to equipment confiscation. The chain is internally consistent within this law, but its reach always remains with foodstuffs, cosmetics, detergents and medicinal preparations.

4. Practical recommendations

• When preparing risk plans for Iraqi projects, GRZAN lists closure for 90 days as a consequence more serious than the fine and states this scenario expressly to clients in quotations and delivery commitments.
• The operator must first establish which kind of premises licence it holds in Iraq: storage, pharmacy and Scientific Bureau licences have different supervising authorities, and the threshold for applying Article 96 differs accordingly. Practical estimate: Scientific Bureaus are usually managed by the Registration Department of the Directorate of Technical Affairs (DTA) (no official provision found).
• Item (c) signals a practical risk: if the Iraqi partner also deals in food, cosmetics or detergents, the confiscation risk to its equipment is bound to those businesses. Contracts should provide that such losses may not be claimed jointly.
• After receiving a penalty decision, GRZAN recommends obtaining the written Arabic decision at once and checking the article cited and the identity of the decision-maker; the appeal procedure is not stated in this law and remains a practical estimate, with no official provision found.
• Keep a violations ledger: register the date, the inspecting authority, the article cited and the outcome for every inspection and every rectification notice, for later review.

5. Verification checklist

• □ Check the three items of Article 96 in the gazette full text and confirm the current wording of the immediate fine and the two figures of 250,000 and 90.
• □ Verify that Article 2 of the eighth amendment law No. 54 (2001) was indeed used to replace the first paragraph of Article 96.
• □ Search the context of the word for apparatus in this article in Arabic and re-confirm the judgement that it points to production equipment, not medical devices.
• □ Obtain from the partner the list of health licences it holds in Iraq and check the persons covered by item (a) of Article 96.
• □ Check whether any later Ministry of Health instructions have adjusted the fine amount or the closure days.
• □ Re-check whether the official documents cited in this article have been replaced by later directives or resolutions (verification baseline of this article: 29 October 2026).

Regulatory information verified to 29 October 2026.

How GRZAN can help. GRZAN provides medical device and IVD registration, quality system, authorised representative and local testing support for the Iraqi market. Our team manages adverse event reporting and recall coordination, and supports post-market vigilance obligations. Business enquiries: info@grzanglobal.com