Postponed several times, the trial of former Energy Minister Chakib Khelil opened on Monday, January 31 before the specialized economic and financial judicial center of Sidi M’hamed (Algiers).
The former strongman of the hydrocarbons sector in Algeria, on the run abroad, is being prosecuted for corruption and granting undue advantages in the context of the construction of a gas complex in Arzew (Oran) when he directed the Department of Energy (1999-2010).
In addition to Chakib Khelil, the former CEO of Sonatrach, Mohamed Meziane, and several executives of the national oil company are also being prosecuted in the same case, in which the Public Treasury and Sonatrach have instituted civil proceedings.
Chakib Khelil was prosecuted in 2013 in the Sonatrach-ENI case, with the launch of an international arrest warrant against him by the Algiers general prosecutor’s office, then headed by Belkacem Zeghmati, future Minister of Justice. But all charges will be dropped and the former minister, rehabilitated, will return to Algeria in 2016.
A new arrest warrant was issued against him by the Algerian courts in August 2019, as part of the investigations against grand corruption, which were launched after the fall of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, driven from power by the streets.
Khelil was one of the personalities very close to former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika. He had led the Energy sector and even the Sonatrach group between 1999 and 2010. He was dismissed from the government following the outbreak of the first major corruption scandal at Sonatrach.
During his management of the Energy sector, some accuse him of having sabotaged the gas field of Hassi R’mel, the largest in the country. In 2005, he also tried to introduce a reform of the law on hydrocarbons which had been deemed too favorable to foreign companies and which never saw the light of day.
