Nationwide "Clean Hands" Crackdown Exposes Massive Food and Alcohol Fraud in Morocco

Trafficking and fraud on goods still have followers in the Kingdom. And from a simple food fraud, the acts of the traffickers can turn into a crime. The "Clean Hands" investigation, while exposing the crime of the innkeeper for having served smuggled, adulterated or expired alcohol at exorbitant prices to the consumer (thus exposing him to possible intoxication), also highlights the distrust of customers towards bars, restaurants...

In Fez for example, 74,505 bottles were seized on September 8 by the DGSN, Customs and the Food Safety Office (Onssa). Investigators notably seized fiscal stamps and smuggled alcoholic products subject to origin rules, reports L’Economiste.

In Casablanca, the picture shows "discrepancies between fiscal stamps and containers": 652 bottles in total seized, in addition to "a large quantity of suspicious fiscal stamps" indicates the same source.

In the DGSN basket, 119 offenses, falsifications of fiscal stamps or alcohol brand labels, 203,016 fiscal stamps and 9.2 million dirhams, the judicial police report. In short, dirty money is still circulating.

Since the "Clean Hands" operation has jurisdiction over economic crimes, it is the financial arm of a court of appeal that is indicated to know the cases of falsification of fiscal stamps, commercial brands. If the attack on public health is retained by the public prosecutor’s office, this would amount to reclassifying the facts as a crime.

The judicial investigation must go to the end to avoid the "Clean Hands" operation being reduced to a simple "Com" operation! worries the newspaper.