Saïda Neghza, Belkacem Sahli, and Abdelhakim Hamadi, whose candidacy files were rejected, are accused of having bought sponsorships from elected officials.
Accused of having bought sponsorships from elected officials, three candidates for the presidential election of September 7 in Algeria were placed under judicial supervision, on Sunday, August 4, for “political corruption”. They are Saïda Neghza, president of the General Confederation of Algerian Enterprises (CGEA), Belkacem Sahli, secretary general of the National Republican Alliance (ANR), and Abdelhakim Hamadi, director of a veterinary products laboratory. All three candidates for the supreme magistracy saw their cases rejected by the Constitutional Court on July 31. After their hearing, on Sunday, by a judge of the economic and financial criminal division, they escaped the committal order.
A “chance” that 68 other accused, local elected officials and “intermediaries” prosecuted for “corruption” in the operation to collect signatures for the presidential election, did not have. For a candidacy file to be validated, 600 signatures from elected officials from different assemblies or 50,000 signatures from registered voters are indeed necessary. According to the investigating judge Lotfi Boudjema, quoted by the Algerian media, elected officials allegedly confessed to “having received sums of money ranging from 20,000 to 30,000 dinars [from 135 to 202 euros] in exchange for signing sponsorship forms for candidates for the candidacy”.
The public prosecutor’s office indicated in a press release that a judicial investigation had been opened against these candidates “for granting an undue privilege, influence peddling, offering or promising cash donations with a view to obtaining or attempting to obtain voters’ votes, abuse of office, obtaining cash donations or promises of electoral votes and fraud.”
Of the sixteen applications submitted to the National Independent Authority for Elections (ANIE), only three were accepted: that of the outgoing president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, that of Abdelaali Hassani Cherif, candidate of the Movement of Society for Peace (MSP, Islamist), and that of Youcef Aouchiche, of the Front of Socialist Forces (FFS, social-democrat).
Itching powder
Even before her hearing by the judge, Saïda Neghza seemed to suspect that her candidacy for the presidency would cause a stir. On July 26, the businesswoman accused the ANIE of “fraud” on her Facebook page, denouncing the pressure exerted on elected officials to get them to declare that the forms had been “purchased .” She was also surprised by the cancellation of 168 sponsorship forms in her candidacy file due to “duplicates,” signatures having already been granted to other candidates while the digitalization of the operation was supposed to prevent such an eventuality.
Without naming the president, Saïda Neghza even contested the reality of the forms collected by Abdelmadjid Tebboune: “One of the candidates claims to have collected 300,000 signatures. I challenge him to prove that it was indeed the citizens who signed and I demand that the election authority make them public,” she wrote.
Was the candidate at risk of disrupting the course of a predetermined election? Known to be a thorn in the side of the regime, Saïda Neghza had criticized, in an open letter made public in September 2023, the economic management of the country under the governance of Abdelmadjid Tebboune. In particular, she denounced the existence, outside of any legal system, of a committee of five ministers who imposed particularly heavy fines on companies. Just after the publication of her letter, she preferred to travel abroad for many months and kept a low profile… before announcing, to everyone’s surprise, on June 10, her candidacy for the presidential election.
