The arrest of the two big bosses, one of whom was a minister under Ben Ali while the other is his former son-in-law, looks like another step in a wave of generalized repression.
New drama in Tunis. On the evening of November 7, the authorities announced in quick succession the placement in police custody of Marwane Mabrouk, former son-in-law of Ben Ali and heavyweight in Tunisian industry including the local subsidiary of the operator Orange, as well as by Abderrahim Zouari, former minister and vice-president of Stafim, representative of Peugeot in Tunisia. Two prominent men, job providers, and representatives of French economic interests. Or prime targets for populists whose voice is currently predominant in Tunisia.
The case of Marwane Mabrouk did not really surprise the business world: since the beginning of the summer, those who navigate the mysteries of Carthage have regularly announced the imminence of action against him. He himself knew he was in the crosshairs of a power determined to make a clean sweep of the past, believing that economic operators were largely guilty of collusion with the old regime.
Accusations that repeat the official populist discourse which implies that the wealthy are traitors to the country and corrupt. A deleterious atmosphere, in a context of economic precariousness, which does not bode well for the private sector. But Kaïs Saïed does not care, he associates property with theft and prefers to refer to archaic economic notions where it is a question of cooperative and welfare state. Not to mention its criminal conciliation initiative supposed to allow the recovery of significant sums but which has, for the moment, led to nothing.
Hunt for big money
In the meantime, the pressures are such on the bosses that the organization that represents them is keeping a low profile and remaining silent. Marwane Mabrouk, 51, has the ideal profile for what some entrepreneurs describe as a witch hunt, but which looks more like a hunt for big money to fill desperately empty state coffers. Former son-in-law of Ben Ali, he is suspected of having benefited from privileges, even though he is at the head of a family fortune built on the investments of his father, Ali, particularly in the agri-food industry.
The three sons, Marwane, Ismaïl, and Mohamed Ali are not annuitants but rather entrepreneurs, committed to developing and diversifying a group that generates more than a billion euros in annual turnover and employs more than 20,000 people. It is difficult to prove that we are dealing with dirty business, especially since the Tunisian private sector has shown exemplary resilience since 2011 and has also contributed to keeping the country afloat. But nothing helps, the caste of tycoons annoys the tenant of Carthage, in that it constitutes a universe opposite to the sphere of old-fashioned academics with which he is familiar.
People’s Trophy
To accuse the business leaders, the president relies on the report produced in 2011 by the Abdelfattah Amor Commission in charge of corruption and embezzlement files, which remains a very approximate compilation based only on the documents it found at the time. For some, this report is even a settling of scores, especially since certain important businessmen from the old regime do not appear in it.
Above all, Kaïs Saïed remains convinced that it is there, among the country’s rich entrepreneurs, that the money is hidden, the trophy that he imagines returning to the people in an act of justice. But by attacking certain revenues generated in an absolutely legal manner – as in the case of Marwane Mabrouk –, the government risks both hitting the mark and finding itself excluded from international investment networks. “We would do well to address the abysmal losses of public companies and seriously reform them rather than running behind those who work. On the contrary, we should make their task easier,” says a software producer.
The Mabrouk case is also on the verge of becoming emblematic: according to his lawyer, Lamjed Nagati, the entrepreneur is accused of managing companies seized by the State, and not of money laundering as mentioned by certain media. In accordance with Tunisian law, his police custody can last five days and is renewable twice.
The 3 trillion man
The case mentioned dates back to 2012. At the time, all of Marwane Mabrouk’s property had been seized, except for seven companies whose origin and legitimacy had been proven. Despite this expertise, in 2017 the State launched a new seizure of these entities, including Orange. A decision that Mabrouk opposed in 2019. The situation is all the more embarrassing since the man is the owner of these companies, and three final judgments in his favor have already been rendered.
From procedures to complaints, Marwane Mabrouk has not really experienced any legal respite since 2011. This has not stopped him from continuing to invest, particularly in the hotel industry. Recently, he hoped to put an end to these years of suspicion and agreed to submit all of his legal cases to the new criminal conciliation process, which closes cases of economic offenses and crimes in return for penalties and investments in major projects in deprived regions of the country. It is he, “the man with 3,000 billion” mentioned by one of the magistrates of the criminal conciliation commission, who for the occasion caused confusion between millions of dinars and billions of millimeters. In short, the man with the big check. According to his lawyer, the conciliation commission requested no less than 800 million dinars. An exorbitant sum that no one has in Tunisia.
Furthermore, the ongoing criminal conciliation process did not prevent Marwane Mabrouk from also being interviewed on September 1, 2023, by agents of the Financial Judicial Unit for “complex financial crimes linked to the confiscated property file”. Then again on October 2, by the first investigating magistrate of this division, regarding the lifting of the freezing of its assets by the European Union in 2017.
Is his custody on November 7 an indication of a failure of criminal conciliation, the mandate of which expires on November 11, and of a future resumption of investigations? Nothing is certain. In the absence of convincing results, the said commission can be renewed once again to achieve, a few months before the presidential election, the objective of 12 billion that Kaïs Saïed had set for it. A figure again based on the report of the Abdelfattah Amor commission, of which no one is now unaware to what extent it is obsolete.
