Moroccan Notary Gets 22-Year Sentence for Massive Land Fraud Scheme

The defendant, aged 56, is accused of falsifying property documents in order to appropriate several plots of land. In the complaint filed against him, his victims provided irrefutable evidence that convinced the judge to sentence him to 12 years in prison during his trial on Wednesday before the criminal chamber of the court of first instance of Rabat.

The notary was sentenced in September last year to 10 years in prison for similar acts in Khémisset in 2020. He had been arrested and placed in custody, after the judicial police of the city opened an investigation into a case of falsification of property documents belonging to others, sources tell Al Akhbar, adding that the Attorney General of the King near the Court of Appeal of Rabat then ordered his detention. An in-depth investigation revealed his involvement in another case of breach of trust.

The families who owned these real estate properties filed a complaint against the notary, accusing him of having dispossessed their agricultural lands. After hearing the plaintiffs and examining all the land documents, deeds of sale and ownership, the prosecution confirmed the guilt of the notary who had falsified official documents to appropriate more than 30 plots of land that he had sold to various people on several occasions. In this case, a second notary was prosecuted at large and sentenced to 8 years in prison.

The convicted man already has a total of 22 years in prison. But he is the subject of a new complaint for document forgery for the purpose of land spoliation and has recently been heard by the security services. He will soon be brought before the competent prosecution.