Moroccan Officials Flee Corruption Crackdown, Escaping to Spain and US

The clean-up operation led by the Ministry of the Interior is causing several commune presidents, officials, and also recently dismissed local government officials or those hit by rulings of ineligibility or exclusion, to flee. Many of them have left the country under the pretext of summer vacations or family reasons, or intend to settle abroad permanently, according to Assabah, which adds that a recently dismissed official from the province of Nouaceur has left for the United States under the cover of accompanying his son to finalize his university enrollment. Other municipal councilors and officials have flown to Spain, justifying their departure either by summer vacations or the need for medical treatment in clinics on the peninsula. Informed of their presence on the list of officials who will be dismissed very soon, others are said to have also fled, including a commune president from the province of Médiouna.

Through these actions, these officials and civil servants are attempting to evade Moroccan justice. In addition to administrative sanctions, they risk serving prison sentences. They are said to be involved in cases of corruption and financial misconduct. There are also serious violations related to the management of local finances, with a particular focus on the manipulation of the tax on undeveloped land, irregularities in the issuance of commercial, industrial and professional permits, the falsification of urban planning documents, in collusion with influential real estate developers, to circumvent the rules in force and public contracts awarded to recurring private companies on the list of awardees, under conditions deemed opaque. Not to mention irregularities affecting tax revenues, suspicious public works contracts, as well as development projects where the companies in charge of the implementation "have been ordered to justify the origin of the materials and equipment used."

Furthermore, the Ministry of the Interior has given the Judicial Agency of the Kingdom free rein to transfer the files of the dismissed presidents from the administrative courts to the public prosecutor’s offices of the Courts of Appeal. The latter have tasked their specialized sections of the financial and economic judicial police to deepen the investigations.