Gold Trafficking Ring Busted: 14 Sentenced in Massive Financial Fraud Scheme

Among the accused, detained at the Oukacha prison, are bankers, jewelers, the owner of a money transfer agency, the owner of a construction materials company, and the owner of a mobile phone store in Derb Ghallef. The case came to light in March last year, after the publication of a video on the web in which a hairdresser and owner of a beauty salon in Hay Hassani revealed her involvement in a network of high-interest daily loans, in exchange for checks and gold ingots.

In the video, the woman claimed to have been incarcerated twice for similar acts, and that bank accounts had been opened in her name with the complicity of bank employees, including a branch manager. Based on these statements, the competent public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation, entrusted to the National Office for the Fight against Economic and Financial Crime, under the National Brigade of the Judicial Police (BNPJ). The investigators managed to locate the woman from the video in a douar in the Ben Ahmed region and to arrest her.

Heard, the defendant confessed and accused other people involved in the case, including several bankers who had granted loans outside the legal procedures, with daily interest rates reaching 10%, without the knowledge of their superiors. The investigations also revealed significant fraud, including the falsification of documents for the opening of bank accounts, the modification of identity card numbers, the falsification of invoices, and the trafficking of stolen gold ingots.

The 14 accused were prosecuted for fraud, breach of trust, money laundering, document forgery, etc. They were sentenced to prison terms ranging from one to five years and ordered to pay fines of several tens of millions of dirhams to the Customs and Indirect Taxes Administration.