Justice is stepping up the pace. In one month, nearly 4 billion euros of property belonging to former officials of the Bouteflika era have been seized.
The horizon darkens a little more for former senior officials and businessmen of the Bouteflika regime, already sentenced to heavy prison terms in the context of corruption cases. Justice has indeed issued a series of orders for the seizure of property, executed gradually since February 15.
Among the assets to be recovered on national territory, a judicial source cites factories, villas, pleasure boats, apartments, plots of land, buildings, cars, jewelry and bank assets.
The value of the confiscated properties amounts to 600 billion dinars (3.8 billion euros), which will be paid into a special fund created under article 43 of the complementary finance law 2021.
This fund brings together the sums recovered abroad, as well as the proceeds from the sale of assets seized after a final court decision.
This account will also be assigned to the payment of costs related to the execution of confiscation, recovery and sale procedures, as well as to the clearance of debts encumbering the seized property.
The execution of searches, sealings and seizures ordered by the courts have already concerned fifteen personalities over the past three weeks.
Huge damage to the public treasury
The attempted sale of two luxury apartments in Paris worth more than 450 million dinars (2.8 million euros) belonging to former Minister of Industry Abdeslam Bouchouareb, convicted in absentia by four court decisions to 80 years in prison, it seems, was the trigger for the acceleration of the proceedings.
However, all of his bank assets and assets, in Algeria and abroad, are subject to seizure orders issued by Algerian courts in corruption cases.
On February 21, justice thus decided to recover ten real estate and industrial properties, two luxury cars of the German brand, as well as various valuables belonging to him. Only his villa in Chéraga, registered in his mother’s name, escaped the nets of the judicial police.
Added to the court file, the list of assets of Ali Haddad, boss of the ETRHB group, detained in Tazoult prison, exceeds ten sheets: several dwellings in Algiers, 57 plots of land and 452 loans from public banks which cost the public treasury 110 billion dinars (706 million euros), added to the 275 projects granted irregularly to the ETRHB group, causing the same institution a loss of 1,000 billion dinars (6.5 billion euros ).
However, only his villas in El-Biar and Delly Brahim, in Algiers, were placed under seal. Ali Haddad was sentenced definitively in May 2021 for “traffic of influence, money laundering, perception of undue advantages and occult financing of the electoral campaign” for the fifth term of former ousted president Abdelaziz Bouteflika.
THE REAL ESTATE THAT THE PERSONALITIES CONCERNED OWN ON THE NATIONAL TERRITORY ARE MAINLY IN THE CAPITAL
The police, under the supervision of the judge and the prosecutor, also proceeded in February to the seizure, in Bouzaréah, on the heights of Algiers, of the house of the businessman Noah Kouninef, to the confiscation of the house de Rouiba of the boss of the Cima Motors group, Mahieddine Tahkout, sentenced for “traffic of influence and perception of undue advantages”, as well as the real estate in Oran of the miller Hocine Metidjii, CEO of the eponymous group.
The Algiers real estate belonging to the two former Prime Ministers Ahmed Ouyahia and Abdelmalek Sellal, former Ministers of Public Works Amar Ghoul and Abdelkader Kadi, Sellal’s chief of staff, Mustapha Rahiel, as well as those of Mokhtar Reguieg, former chief of protocol at the Presidency of the Republic, were also placed under seal.
Like the houses that are in the names of the children of Major General Abdelghani Hamel, under his sentence to ten years in prison and the seizure of his property in the context of the case of the alleged daughter of the former president Bouteflika.
The real estate owned by the personalities concerned on the national territory is mainly in the capital. The factories and certain plots of land, on the other hand, are scattered throughout the country.
Lap of the state
The operations should extend to the industrial fabric belonging to the detained businessmen. At the beginning of January, the Head of State, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, ordered, during a Council of Ministers, to complete the operation to transfer the confiscated assets to the commercial public sector before the end of the first quarter of 2022.
It is now up to the government to complete the census of the factories whose legal status has been regularized with a view to their transfer to the bosom of the State. One of the companies concerned, located in the wilaya of Jijel, produces edible oil.
The factory belongs to the Kouninef brothers, owners of the KouGC group and sentenced in May 2021 by the Algiers court to imprisonment, heavy fines and seizure of their property. They were prosecuted for “influence peddling, money laundering, hidden financing of President Bouteflika’s electoral campaign and the perception of undue advantages”.
Among the many assets of businessman Mahieddine Tahkout, the student transport company Mahieddine Tahkout Transport will be the first to be transferred to the State, to the Ministry of Transport. The procedure will also affect the companies of the Mazouz group made up of several subsidiaries and the ETRHB public works company of businessman Ali Haddad. The jobs and assets of these entities will be preserved.
