Samir Taïeb was taken into custody with seven other officials from the Ministry of Agriculture last October, on the decision of the investigating judge who had issued a committal warrant against them.
The investigating judge at the Economic and Financial Judicial Pole decided on Friday the provisional release of the former Tunisian Minister of Agriculture Samir Taïeb as well as three other officials suspected of involvement in a case of fraud in a public contract between the Ministry of Agriculture and a private company specializing in computer equipment.
According to the official Tunis Afrique Presse (TAP) press agency, citing the information office of the Tunis Court of First Instance, the adviser to the Ministry of Agriculture, the manager of the company benefiting from the contract as well as an official from the same department was also provisionally released.
It should be recalled that last October, a Tunisian court decided to place the aforementioned minister and seven other officials of the Ministry of Agriculture in custody, as part of an investigation into suspicions of “financial and administrative corruption”.
The investigation concerned a call for tenders for the acquisition of computer equipment for the benefit of the Ministry of Agriculture, valued at more than 800 thousand dinars (283 thousand dollars).
