Moroccan Bank Director Vanishes with Millions in Client Funds, Sparking Investigation

Another misappropriation of depositors’ funds. The director of a Bank of Africa branch agency in Tetouan diverted up to 20 million dirhams from clients’ accounts and fled the country with the embezzled funds, reports Rue20. Before him, Daniel Ziouzio, 55, director of the Union Marocaine des Banques agency in Tetouan, who is also one of the administrators of the Moghreb de Tétouan football club and a municipal councilor, was arrested and placed in custody. His accomplice, his cashier colleague, and he would have embezzled millions of dirhams from bank accounts of clients - companies, businessmen, civil servant associations, or individuals - from his agency.

A Moroccan residing in the Netherlands accused the Bank of Africa affiliated agency, located in the Al-Hamama district in the heart of the city of Tetouan, of having "embezzled" one million dirhams from his bank account and filed a complaint with the king’s prosecutor at the court of first instance of the city, indicates the same source. In his complaint, he accuses the director and employees of the agency of breach of trust and fraud, fraud and forgery as stipulated by the Penal Code through recurrent misappropriations from his account at the agency while he was outside the national territory. The MRE asks the public prosecutor’s office to open an urgent investigation into this case, to prosecute the persons involved and all the persons involved in this case, and to preserve his right to follow the progress of the file.

"The competent authorities, after investigating his complaint, found that all the disputed transactions were carried out on the basis of documents bearing signatures consistent with those deposited at the agency, as confirmed by a handwriting expert," the bank’s management explained after having "received a notice of receipt of the complaint in which he disputes several operations deducted from his account." It therefore points to an "unfounded" complaint.