Real estate in Morocco: MREs in the crosshairs for money laundering

It was the notaries and real estate agents who sounded the alarm. Several suspicious transactions have caught their attention: new companies, emerging from nowhere, are injecting colossal sums to buy up real estate projects that have been paralyzed for months, even years.

The method is well-rehearsed: these "saviors" pay substantial down payments to lift the bank seizures that weigh on the land titles. Outwardly, everything is legal. The registration fees are paid, the taxes settled, all through notary offices to lull the vigilance of financial controllers, reports Hespress.

Connections with Spain and the Netherlands

The ANRF investigation, conducted in coordination with Bank Al-Maghrib and the Tax Office, particularly targets three buyers. Intelligence from Spain and the Netherlands links these individuals to international drug trafficking. Two of them, residing abroad and holding other nationalities, show a glaring discrepancy between the modest value of their companies and the astronomical amounts circulating on the ground.

Their strategy does not stop at simple purchase. These networks call on accounting firms for a real "debt engineering". Debt restructuring, asset sharing or share buybacks: everything is done to complicate the arrangements and mask the illicit origin of the funds injected to restart these construction sites (often blocked for defects or bankruptcy).

Faced with this resurgence, the ANRF has transmitted 84 files to the King’s Prosecutors between 2023 and 2024, marking an increase of more than 18% in cases referred to the justice system.