Morocco Accused of $2.1 Million Vote-Buying Scheme in Spanish Enclave Melilla

According to the police investigation report obtained by El Debate, Morocco would have used the Hawala system to transfer significant amounts to Melilla for the purpose of buying ballots. This is an informal payment system generally used for money laundering, drug trafficking or terrorist financing, as it does not allow the origin of the money to be traced.

The system relies on brokers who transport money from one place to another, from the sender to the recipient. Millions of euros, dollars or any currency are thus moved without a trace. For the moment, the investigators estimate at 2 million euros the funds already transferred from Morocco to Melilla to carry out this electoral fraud.

As part of their investigation, the agents arrested Mohamed Ahmed Al Lal, an advisor to the Melilla government suspected of a vote-buying conspiracy for having inflated the budget of a public contract to finance the network of intermediaries in the Hawala system. The accused signed on May 5 the award of four public contracts for a total amount of 60,000 euros for the organization of a concert by the singers Cadix Kiko & Shara.

The artists ultimately received only 7,000 euros. Investigators discovered that 56,200 euros were divided among four companies. An amount that would be diverted to pay the intermediaries for electoral fraud purposes.