Two Women Arrested in Expanding Moroccan Judicial Corruption Scandal

This decision follows a complaint filed with the King’s Prosecutor. The two women, a hairdresser and her friend, are accused of having put pressure on the victim of a magistrate and deputy prosecutor of the king near the court of first instance of Casablanca incarcerated with his alleged accomplices for their alleged involvement in cases of corruption, falsification of reports, abuse of power and influence peddling, reports Assabah. The victim is a Moroccan living abroad.

The two women failed in their attempts to get her to go back on her previous statements already recorded in the reports of the judicial police. They do not admit defeat, however. They threaten the plaintiff. Exasperated, she filed a complaint with the King’s Prosecutor near the court of first instance of Casablanca. The investigation carried out allowed him to decide to prosecute the defendants in detention for "maneuvers and threats to get someone to make a false statement" under the provisions of Article 373 of the Penal Code.

This article provides that "Whoever, in any matter, at any stage of a procedure or with a view to a request or defense in court, uses promises, offers or gifts, pressures, threats, violence, maneuvers or artifices to determine another to make a deposition or a statement or to deliver a false attestation, is punished, whether the subornation has had an effect or not, with imprisonment of one to three years and a fine of 120 to 2,000 dirhams".