Lawyer, Businesswoman, and Ex-Officer Implicated in $35,000 Rabat Legal Scam

It all started with a complaint filed by the families of two young people prosecuted and convicted by the Tangier justice system in 2019 to five years in prison for "forming a criminal gang, fraud and theft" with the president of the Supreme Council of the Judiciary (CSPJ) and the Rabat bar association. A lawyer from the Rabat bar, a businesswoman in Bouznika who was posing as the wife of a senior official at the Court of Auditors, and a former Royal Navy officer are targeted by the complaint, reports the daily Assabah.

The investigation conducted by the National Brigade of the Judicial Police (BNPJ) under the supervision of the competent public prosecutor’s office revealed that the former Royal Navy officer initially played the role of intermediary between the family of one of the young people imprisoned in Tangier and the lawyer from the Rabat bar and had received a guarantee check worth 350,000 dirhams for a supposed intervention in the case. This former Royal Navy officer met the lawyer in Rabat. The latter was accompanied by the businesswoman claiming to be the wife of a senior official at the Court of Accounts, whose mission was to intervene directly with the Attorney General. These three defendants were supposed to work together for the release of the young people imprisoned by the Tangier Court of Appeal. But they failed. The two young people are still in prison.

Legal troubles then begin. After being brought before the public prosecutor’s office, the lawyer was placed in detention. The former Royal Navy officer, for his part, rejected the claims that he had heard the lawyer promise the two families to intervene with the Attorney General. As for the businesswoman, she says she discovered that the lawyer was married and a father, even though he had promised her marriage.