Moroccan Urban Planning Scandal: Officials Probed for Collusion with Real Estate Developers

It all started with complaints accusing certain civil servants of collusion with real estate speculators. These complaints reveal leaks recorded in various urban planning document projects over a period covering the last five years. The first cases were recorded in early 2019. However, they remained confidential until the multiplication of complaints from users of the building permit services, report sources at Hespress, adding that they denounced suspicious practices attributed to certain agents, including the sale of land, the provision of advice to speculators and real estate developers, as well as the usurpation of prerogatives by urban planning officials to the detriment of the other components of the administrative structure of the local authorities.

These practices are the subject of a thorough examination as part of the audit operations. The inspection missions have been extended to certain authority agents, whose names appear in reports indicating leaks of sensitive information from the territorial administration, reveal the same sources. In the provinces considered as traditional strongholds of real estate "lobbies", a proliferation of anarchic construction has been discovered. Faced with these serious shortcomings, the governors have convened disciplinary councils, at the end of which sanctions ranging from suspension to outright dismissal have been pronounced against several moqaddems.

Similarly, a large-scale reshuffle in the ranks of the moqaddems and the Sheikhs has been carried out by the governors of the provinces concerned - some of whom have recently been affected by the transfer movement - following the revelations made by the caïds and the heads of local administrative annexes. According to them, authority agents had transmitted the dates and times of the field inspections carried out by the commissions responsible for verifying urban planning offenses. Worse, some have diverted their prerogatives related to field investigations to make it an illegal income-generating activity, particularly with the multiplication of illegal constructions in their areas of competence and the proliferation of clandestine plastic bag manufacturing workshops prohibited by law, specify the same sources.

Furthermore, the head of the urban planning department of a prefecture in the Rabat region has submitted his resignation after investigations uncovered irregularities in this sector, the same sources report.