Istiqlal party member Mohamed El Hafed is in trouble with the law over acts of mismanagement and embezzlement of public funds. The shortfall amounts to more than 50 million DH.
Laila Lamrani
Trials for malfeasance and embezzlement of public funds continue and are all similar. On 9 December 2024, the trial of the former president of the Sidi Kacem municipal council for the period (2015-2021) will resume (the first hearing took place on 11 November) before the first-degree criminal chamber of the Rabat Court of Appeal.
A deputy of the Istiqlal party for the city's constituency and vice-president of the Rabat-Salé-Kénitra region, Mohamed El Hafed must answer while at liberty to accusations of embezzlement of public funds, the voluminous file for which was filed with the court on 18 October. A fact too rare not to be mentioned, it is his successor at the head of the commune, the RNI's Abdelilah Ouaissa, who is at the origin of the complaint that led to the judicial questioning of his predecessor and the opening of proceedings against him. The manoeuvres engaged by the latter to ensure that a man devoted to him would succeed him in order to cover up his exploits in mismanagement proved futile. A man who has spent most of his career in the administration, whose secrets and procedures he masters, Mr. Ouaissa is not a man to slip into the slippers of his predecessors, being very keen to know what he will inherit in terms of financial situation and skeletons in the closet. In this regard, Mr. Ouaissa can boast of being one of the few elected officials, if not the only one, to exercise the right of inventory and to have the accounts, management acts, and expenses incurred by Mr. El Hafed audited. The audit of the commune's accounts revealed some shocking findings. Failures galore and cases of embezzlement totalling nearly 55 million DH.
After the hearing of Mohamed El Hafed, the King's Prosecutor General at the Rabat Court of Appeal transferred the file to the investigating judge. The latter decided in mid-January 2024 to place the accused under judicial supervision. On 18 October, the decision was taken to refer the case to the Court of Appeal. In detail, Mr. El Hafed, who operates in Casablanca in the kit kitchen sector, is accused of suspicious negligence in the collection of municipal taxes estimated at millions of DH. These include taxes applied to undeveloped urban land, royalties collected on municipal markets, and rents for commercial premises intended for the exercise of a certain number of professional activities.
Mismanagement
The negligence of the former president is also pointed out in the collection of taxes on the occupation of the communal public domain and those relating to passenger transport. Mr. El Hafed was also criticised for his problematic handling of the file on the delegated management of the city's cleaning service entrusted to the company Ozone (whose boss Abdelaziz El Badraoui has been in pre-trial detention since February 2024 at Oukacha prison in connection with irregularities in a similar contract in the city of Bouznika). In Sidi Kacem, Ozone curiously benefited from a waiver of rights owed to the commune, even though the terms of the contract provide for a deduction of 2% of the company's turnover. A sum intended to finance the permanent control service for 5 years (from 2017 to 2021). This "indulgence" deprived the commune of significant financial resources estimated at approximately 1 million DH. In addition, a series of infractions affecting various aspects of this company's activity, which should have earned it fines for non-compliance with its commitments, were not sanctioned by the commune, as provided for in the specifications. This represents a shortfall for the communal budget of some 9 million DH. Even more serious, the investments to which Ozone had committed were not all carried out due to their deployment outside the scope of the delegated management, thus depriving the commune of resources valued at approximately 2.5 million DH.
Another failure noted in the management of the former president of the commune is the illegal operation of the Sidi Kacem communal car park, the diverted royalties of which were estimated at just under 6 million DH by the complainant. Last but not least, under Mr. El Hafed's mandate, the municipal council was hit with judgments for a total amount of 7.16 million DH in the context of very poorly managed legal cases. Furthermore, the current president's complaint mentions disproportion in certain management charges; notably the expenses generated by the recruitment of an army of casual agents, largely in excess of the actual needs of the commune's services. This waste, which includes various other management costs, coincided particularly with the 2021 election campaign. Electoral clientelism, when you have us!
