Marrakech Mayor and Deputy Face Corruption Probe Over COP22 Contracts

On Wednesday, Younès Benslimane, first deputy mayor of Marrakech, PJD deputy, and president of the Marrakech-ville district, was heard by the investigating judge, Youssef Zitouni, in charge of financial crimes at the Court of Appeal. The mayor, Mohamed Larbi Belcaid, from the same party, had been brought before the same judge for a preliminary investigation on the same charges. The two men, as well as other officials from the municipal council and contractors, had been questioned by the BNPJ, before being brought before the prosecutor of the king of Marrakech for the same reasons.

In total, 50 contracts, estimated at 300 million dirhams, were awarded through negotiated contracts. According to le360, "these contracts were divided into lots and awarded to subcontractors. As a result, more than five beneficiary companies were tasked with carrying out the work of a single contract, thus violating the public procurement code".

The investigating judge decided to set April 15 as the date for the in-depth investigation. At the same time, the judge will hear the regional secretary of the Moroccan Association for the Defense of Human Rights in Marrakech, as a plaintiff. Abdelilah Tatouche has a lot to say about how the mayor and his deputy managed the contracts by awarding them to a company that did not even participate in the tender.

Even more seriously, "this company had submitted the least advantageous offer, at a cost of 4,130,000 dirhams instead of 3,570,000, the price retained during the tender". According to the plaintiff, the deputy mayor repeated this on August 25, 2016 by canceling another contract relating to public lighting to favor the same company, with the overvaluation of the contract in the background, which went from 1,430,000 to 5,000,000 dirhams. And as there are never two without three, the same official also signed a negotiated contract worth 39 million dirhams relating to the power supply of electric battery buses.

So many inconsistencies and carelessness in the management of these contracts, which justify the prosecution of the mayor and his deputy.