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Table of Contents!
!
!
!
Preface 1!
!
Chapter I
...
When The Monarchy Lives at The Expense of Its Subjects 8!
12 Royal Palaces 11!
The State Underwrites and Maintains The King 13!
Drops of Rain Like So Many Bars of Gold 16!
!
Chapter III
...
The Monarchy of Connection and Corruption 35!
The Witch-Hunt 36!
The Monarchy of The Old Boys Network 39!
…and The Monarchy of Rogues 43!
Majidi — In Debt to The Emirs of The Gulf 46!
!
Chapter V
...
The Anti-French Conspiracy 58!
“He Gave Everything to The French” 60!
“They Are Astoundingly Arrogant” 63!
The King Does Not Listen to Chirac 66!
No Project Is Possible without The King’s Agreement 70!
!
Chapter VII
...
A Successful Stock Market Hold-Up 90!
When “An Average Joe” Is A Billionaire 91!
A Fortune Built on Low-Income Housing 92!
The Biggest Insider Trading Scandal in Morocco’s History? 95!
“I Don’t Have Any Information” 98!
!
Chapter IX
...
Advisors Are Beaten 109!
The Royal Domains: “Everything Is Confidential” 112!
Freedom of Expression Is Devastated 113!
!
Chapter X
...
A System Gone Crazy 132!
“If This Were Known, The Whole System Would Blow up!” 134!
“The King Does Not Speak, The King Does Not Communicate” 135!
All Power Resides in Locking up Three Spheres of Operation 137!
How Do You Take over A Soccer Stadium? 139!
Mohammed VI’s Festival 141!
!
The Year That Mawazine Nearly Died 144!
Chapter XII
...
The King Preys on The People 161!
“This Can’t Go On Any Longer!” 163!
Two Billion Euros 165!
Every Day, The Moroccan People Make Money for The King 167!
!
Epilogue: A Silent And Guilty France 168!
98% “Yes” Votes! 169!
France: Deaf, Dumb, And Blind 172!
!
!
!
predator: a person or an organization that uses weaker people for their
own advantage; someone who follows people in order to harm them or
commit a crime against them; one that preys, destroys, or devours!
[L
...
] !
Synonyms: bloodsucker, buzzard, harpy, vampire, vulture, wolf!
!
!
!
Preface
!
Our book describes a royal plundering
...
In 2012, the Moroccan monarchy still enforces silence and secrecy
on its actions, often making our inquiry tricky to carry out
...
In order to avoid leaks, we sometimes revealed only a portion of our
project to respondents
...
; and finally politicians, who had
knowledge of certain sensitive questions we wanted to raise
...
!
The Moroccan monarchy established a veritable "culture of submissiveness" among the power élite
...
Plundering Morocco
when it swooped down, royal disfavor brought social condemnation,
as well as financial and professional retribution
...
They know our deep affection for Morocco and its people
...
One of us, Catherine Graciet, worked as an editorial insider on the important opposition newspaper, Le Journal hebdomadaire, later shut down by the authorities,
and notably spent a year on assignment in Casablanca
...
The
other, Eric Laurent, met Hassan II on numerous occasions, and in different palaces, resulting in a book of interviews with him entitled La
Mémoire d'un roi, published in 1993
...
!
!
In Morocco, the monarchy remains the sole source of power
...
The king's excesses are protected by a
kind of omertà that we decided to break with this book
...
"!
!
!
!
!
!
!
2
!
I
...
In the grouping specially devoted to reigning monarchs, the
king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, made an astonishing appearance in
seventh place, with a fortune estimated at $2
...
He placed
ahead of rivals who, although they appeared to be richly endowed,
such as the Emir of Qatar whose lands are overflowing with natural
gas and oil, or the Emir of Kuwait whose fortune, according to
Forbes, was one-sixth that of the Moroccan king
...
However, Mohammed VI, whose fortune had doubled in five years, seemed to have mysteriously escaped from this
unforeseen turn of events since Forbes put him at the top of the category of personalities having acquired their wealth during 2008
...
!
In the world report on human development drawn up by the PNUD,
the U
...
agency for development, covering the period from 2007 to
2008, Morocco was actually classified as 126th (out of 177 countries)
from the point of view of "human development
...
1%
...
202 a day, and the minimum legal daily salary
does not exceed $0
...
To make things worse, in 2008, Morocco's
1 Fédoua Tounassi, “Mohammed VI, un roi en or massif”, Courrier international, no
...
2 The conversion rate of dirhams into euros was subject to variations, and the authors opted for
an average exchange rate of 1 euro = 10 dirhams
...
20
...
Plundering Morocco
public debt leapt by 10% in a single year, to reach 11,9 billion euros,
or 20% of the GNP
...
In particular, it said nothing about, or ignored, the mechanisms put
into place to amass such enormous wealth
...
!
!
An Economic Coup d'État!
For a long time, during Hassan II's reign, the Office chérifien des
phosphates (OCP) saw a significant portion of its profits -- estimated
to be as much as 50% -- subtracted from the public budget in order to
meet the king's expenses
...
!
"My country belongs to me," Hassan II believed, and he applied this
principle with great consistency
...
He liked luxury, sumptuous expenditures, and yet never did his
name appear in the indexes of the the wealthiest personalities
...
He seized control of all the key sectors, a latent economic coup
d'état in which the appearance of legality was used to mask the
enormity of this arbitrary take-over
...
Most
frequently, it concerned primary resources, like oil
...
!
Abuse of power in Morocco, such as we intend to demonstrate, is of
a completely different quality and falls under an unheard of set of circumstances without precedent
...
It represents a reality which one should actually speak of in the past tense
...
!
At the beginning of the 20th century, a master of French ironworks,
Wendel, articulated a principle which Mohammed VI and his entourage seem to have adopted: "What is good leaves no trace; what
leaves a trace is not good
...
He controls the agricultural sector as well, mass distribution, and energy
technology
...
Yet the king's unbridled accumulation of wealth, like the the same comportment of several men in
his service, might very well have had incalculable political consequences just at a time when the population has been hit head-on by a
crisis that impoverished and weakened the middle class
...
!
The revelations in Forbes were followed by a particularly absurd
example of censorship
...
It had reproduced an
article entitled "A King Made of Solid Gold" by the journalist Fédoua
Tounassi, published only a short time prior to this in the Moroccan
weekly Le Journal hebdomadaire
...
!
!
Ascending to the throne in 1999, Mohammed VI became fondly
known as the "king of the poor
...
" Still more
shocking, he actually enjoyed being introduced as a "businessman,"
5
The Predator-King
...
!
A quick parallel with other monarchies, whether they be constitutional in nature or not, allows us to understand that in this case we
are light years away from any sort of democratic ethic
...
But the man was a formidable political animal, with an
unerring and impressive survival instinct
...
!
!
The King's Secret Garden!
Looking out for his own interests, Hassan II always made sure that
members of the royal family -- and himself, first of all -- were the beneficiaries of a substantial income
...
His successor, on the other hand, remains a genuine
political enigma: nonexistent on the international scene, often absent
from the domestic scene, he has never agreed to be interviewed by a
Moroccan journalist, never called even a minor press conference, and
he seems to be as uninterested in politics as he is in his own country
...
!
!
A predilection for deals is the king's secret garden, a secret which
was, for a long time, carefully protected by his fawning entourage, but
a garden whose boundaries stretched over the entire kingdom
...
The denunciation of corruption was, in
point of fact, at the very heart of the rallying cries hurled out by the
people who overcame the authoritarian regimes of Tunisia, Egypt,
and Libya
...
!
!
In a universe as scrupulously coded and camouflaged as Morocco,
these attacks were, in reality, directed against the person of the king
himself, whom it would have been a sacrilege to address directly
...
On August 1, 2009, the Palace, indirectly via the Minister of
the Interior, seized and confiscated the latest issue of the independent magazine Tel Quel, and its Arabic version, Nichane
...
A case of odious censorship, but especially absurd
was the fact that the people had a positive view of the man who had
taken the throne a decade earlier
...
" Perhaps not "into the
equation," but certainly into the figures, thus provoking concern
sweeping over the men trying to take charge of the operation
...
Le Monde, which published the results of the poll, was banned
two days later in Morocco
...
That particular day, a
7
The Predator-King
...
The caption said "Trial in Morocco against the caricaturist
Khalid Gueddar who dared to draw the Moroccan royal family" (Le
Monde, October 22, 2009)
...
!
!
"Makhzen" is the word which designates the governmental mechanism surrounding the sovereign
...
For
the men of the makhzen, Morocco is little more than an open mine to
be exploited with impunity -- a world where the sense of general or
national interest does not exist
...
!
!
!
!
II
...
4 Yet, this impoverished
country headed by a weak government is a source of immeasurable
satisfaction for the king
...
4 World Bank, 2009
...
8
of the economic pie, he increases his already immense personal
wealth, while the (modest) national budget takes on all of his expenditures
...
Rule number two: on this subject, lack of transparency and silence are de rigueur, and this exceedingly generous "social security"
granted the monarch and his entourage is not up for discussion
...
" Nearly 50 years later, the project for the new
Constitution, elaborated by his son, again uses the same terse words,
in Article 45 -- a subtlety which does not escape the members of Parliament
...
In order to explain this touching passivity, a deputy confided one day to a Moroccan newspaper that
"Generally, we don't even dare to utter the words 'royal budget' when
we're debating the law on finances
...
Pensions and royal salaries,
equivalent to $3,224,250 per annum take into account the remuneration paid to the king's brother as well as to his sisters and related
princes
...
All members of the royal
family are entitled to their own "civil list" by the Moroccan government
as payment for their official duties; it is usually rather modest
...
Under
5 Driss Ksikes and Khalid Tritki, “Enquête
...
156-157
...
9
The Predator-King
...
This is a
sum which, of course, evades any form of control, but we know that
when Hassan II was in power it functioned, in part, as a slush fund
intended to curry the favors of certain political personalities, either
Moroccan or foreign, and to reward that peculiar French clique known
as "Friends of Morocco" for its loyalty -- a group made up of journalists, academics, doctors, attorneys, and ex-officials from the Ministry
of Information…!
Each year, each of these "beneficiaries" would receive a formal invitation, bearing the royal coat of arms, inviting them to the Celebration
of the Throne, as well as first class plane tickets
...
Most of
them sporting the Legion of Honor medal on their lapels, they exuded
an air of respectability and the self-satisfaction that goes with it
...
Yet, this special group was as prudent as it was vain
...
!
Each attack against Hassan II found them silent, uneasy, almost as
if absent from the scene
...
In contrast, Maurice
Druon, Secretary General of the Académie Française, who so thoroughly enjoyed the company of the king of Morocco, hid behind a
cautious silence
...
10
12 Royal Palaces!
The 12 royal palaces spread throughout the country, to which must
be added about 30 private residences in which some 1200 employees work, are paid for by the public Treasury to the tune of one million
dollars a day
...
But it is not important since they are all
maintained with equally attentive care
...
!
The employees hired by the palace come at a cost of about $70
million from the governmental budget
...
9!
The stable of cars, in and of itself, is endowed by a budget of
$7,738,200, devoted to the upkeep of utilitarian vehicles but also to
the maintenance of luxury automobiles belonging to the king
...
His successor, however, does not flinch before chartering a Moroccan military plane, similar
to the Hercules, in order to transport his Aston Martin DB7 to England
where the manufacturer is located, so it can be repaired as quickly as
8 Devon Pendleton, “King of Rock,” Forbes, June 17, 2009
...
11
The Predator-King
...
10 He is, in addition, a special client of Ferrari, from whom he
purchases numerous models
...
His father was satisfied changing his outfit three
times a day and the Parisian designer Smalto was the beneficiary of
this indulgence
...
He had a llama wool coat custommade by London tailors at a cost of 35,000 pounds sterling
...
12!
Another expensive item budgeted in the finance law are foreign visits by the king and his court -- excursions which, in 2008, were estimated at $49,008,600
...
His Majesty's Boeing14 displays
over-the-top luxury appointments and was equipped with a bedroom,
a conference room, a machine-filled exercise room, and the very latest in stereo components
...
Beyond that, the
king is often accompanied by 250 to 300 people, flying in another
Boeing 747 and two Boeing 737-400s, to which must be added three
Hercules C-130s for the furniture and luggage
...
11 “Le Roi de la sape,” Tel Quel, no
...
12 Ibid
...
400, December 2008
...
12
aging about three weeks in duration, and 60 hours of weekly flights,
the bill exceeds three million dollars per excursion
...
8 million which
represents the staff's accommodations
...
15 At the end of this jaunt, he set himself up for three
weeks along with his entire entourage in an idyllic tourist resort located in the Dominican Republic
...
In Paris, he stays at one of his
private homes or else at the Hotel Crillon, Place de la Concorde
...
!
!
The State Underwrites And Maintains The King!
In order to understand the extent to which the Moroccan state has
become the monarchy's cash cow, one has to go back 35 years, to
the 1980s
...
In keeping with genuine empire-building, but solely concerned for his own glory and comfort, he begins to construct a palace in the north, near Tangiers, to
which he practically never went, and then another in the south of the
kingdom, at Agadir, where during his 38 years in power, he spent a
sum total of 24 hours
...
!
Under his reign, 3000 artisans worked on the renovation of the
palace in Marrakech, the enlargement of the one in Fez, already immense, then on the upgrading and redecorating of those in Meknès
and Tetouan
...
400, December 2008
...
Plundering Morocco
as the first, was built in Agadir, then another in Erfoud
...
!
Hassan II assigned the implementation of these projects to the
French architect André Paccard, whose fortune was assured before
he fell into disgrace
...
In the beginning of the 1980s, he thus decided to create a new ministry which,
oddly enough, remained totally independent of the government: the
Ministry of the Royal House, Protocol, and Justice, under the direction of one of the faithful, General Moulay Hafid El-Alaoui
...
The palaces continued belonging
to the king, on the surface of things, but they were actually managed
by this fake ministry -- and their functioning would henceforth be financed by public monies
...
Several
executives from the Ministry of Finance and high-level officers from
the army were thus transferred and put into positions as bursar and
archivist
...
He was a courteous and deferential little
man, confidante of all the monarchy's financial secrets and, so it is
said, somewhat of an alcoholic
...
!
Frej's idea was simple: since public monies were financing the
monarchy, why not take advantage of this to add to the king's wealth
by sponging directly off the State itself
...
The heir to the throne had sufficient time to
observe the benefits of just such a system -- it would be astonishingly
simple
...
The branches of this group were
supposedly the exclusive suppliers to the palace and royal residences
...
Moreover, all foods consumed within these royal confines are obtained
only from the royal Domains, which are the agricultural properties of
the king: officially estimated at 29,652 acres of the richest lands in the
country, and in reality, most likely ten times that total area
...
All orders that go through the palace are billed at
excessive rates and paid through the intervention of the royal house
of Protocol and Budget -- in short, by the Moroccan State
...
It is an activity subject to climactic changes and whose
political repercussions did not go unnoticed by Hassan II: "If I had to
choose between a weather report and a police report, I would give
priority to the first
...
"!
In point of fact, he gave both equal priority -- a telling decision
...
Plundering Morocco
the Atlas, and ride back to Rabat by car
...
Hassan II, himself at the wheel of a
Rolls Royce, changed to a Cadillac after a few dozen miles
...
The king's secretary, clearly annoyed,
declared that "His Majesty wanted to travel without being noticed, and
I wonder who could have forewarned the residents of our travel
through this region
...
!
Every collaborator, the most subservient follower, knows that the
king cannot stand a void or not being surrounded by his subjects
...
All the actors of this stage-set
had, at one time or another, been faced with the king's outbursts and
idiosyncrasies, and they knew that their own future was in the balance
...
The fawning associate who gave
the orders feared disgrace and the local bureaucrats who carried out
the orders were mindful that their career could end in a flash
...
The convoy
stopped at the edge of the town, security forces were deployed, and
the king left his vehicle in order to sit in the back seat of a Mercedes
500, whose roof opened, and where, standing up, he saluted the
crowd while being driven through the town
...
Having
16
crossed through the village, the convoy was interrupted once again,
and Hassan II, rain running down his face, arrived at a mobile home
where five of his closest followers were nervously awaiting him,
handkerchief in hand
...
--”Your Majesty,” inquired a voice, filled with humility, belonging to someone whose handkerchief hadn't been chosen, “are you not soaking wet?” -- “Not at all,” he answered with a
wide smile
...
The arrival of the rain is a prediction for a bountiful harvest and thus, we are joyous, there is peace in the land
...
However, Hassan II had a law implemented, reaffirmed by his successor, that exempted all farmers from
paying income tax, and thus the royal Domains among them
...
But it did permit the royal Domains to increase profits by not paying any State taxes
...
!
A Moroccan engineer, Ahmed Benseddik, worked out a quick comparison, using official calculation
...
Despite this stunning gap
in wealth, the total budget of the royal Palace, covered by the Moroccan State, reached 228 million euros, while that of the Elysée topped
16 Remarks obtained by one of the authors, Ifrane 1993
...
lakome
...
Plundering Morocco
off at 1,126 million euros
...
This difference, important in and of itself when
it is related to the PNB of each of the two countries, underscores the
fact that the Moroccan monarchy costs the State budget 60 times
what the French presidency costs France
...
Putting together the budgets of four
departments -- the Ministries of Transport and Equipment, Youth and
Sport, Culture, Housing and Urban Development -- a total of
$291,472,200 is spent, which is less than the budget of the Palace
alone, which comes to about $322,425,000
...
!
In order to explain his constant moving around during that time, he
freely quoted his father, who with an irrefutable sense of the right
formula, affirmed "The throne of the Alawites rests on the saddle of
their horses
...
The visit
to a hospital, the inauguration of a school or a public housing project
(generally constructed by real estate promoters favored by the king
and who hand over substantial sums of money to his immediate entourage) are defined by hectic and often slapdash preparations
...
18
dens, and have the population shout "Long live the king" while thinking "Thanks to him, we're getting what government is incapable of
providing us
...
In 2008, out of the
total of $2,450,430,000 allocated to the monarch, $49,008,600 are
spent on the king's traveling, either domestic or foreign
...
If the sovereign is not close to one of his palaces, the finest
residences are requisitioned in order to assure the comfort of his stay
and that of his entourage
...
Sometimes, meals are provided on the spot
by Rahal, the king's personal chef
...
19!
However, this seeming royal benevolence has its limits: the entourage and the regional authorities attempt first and foremost to satisfy the king's demands, even if it means cheating a little
...
The medical equipment had not yet been ordered, and what the
king had been shown was merely rented for the occasion
...
The royal fortune never contributes anything to help the destitute
...
They are unaware,
19 Ibid
...
19
The Predator-King
...
!
This is so, even if the real impact has yet to be felt
...
!
!
!
!
III
...
It was a reign
marked simultaneously by continuity and rupture with the 38 years
that his father ruled the country
...
!
The royal absolutism of Hassan II was strictly political and its goal
was to insure perpetuity of the Moroccan monarchy
...
!
!
Understanding the economic and financial coup d'état carried out
by Mohammed VI assumes first and foremost an understanding of his
personality and of the (conflictual) relationship he had with his father
...
!
20
Proximity is often deceptive, since it gives the illusion of understanding
...
Regularly invited to the palaces of
Marrakech and Fez, this élite gets slanted stories from men who are
supposedly close to the king
...
Rumors are continually circulating, but
never truth
...
The
terrorist attacks in Casablanca in 2003 which resulted in 45 deaths,
ended his good intentions
...
In this way, Mohammed VI began to don his father's cloak
...
" The reason
for that was obvious: when he was very young, he was faced with historical changes and knew better than anyone else that, had the hand
of fate not intervened, he would have lost power once and for all
...
In 1953,
France was was exasperated by the Sultan Mohammed Ben
Youssef's favorable leanings towards independence, and decided to
depose him and send the future Mohammed V, Hassan II's father,
into exile
...
!
French authorities put one of his distant cousins, Mohammed Ben
Arafa, on the throne of the deposed sultan
...
Mo21
The Predator-King
...
Mohammed V becomes, however, the first king of the
country in 1957
...
The first break with tradition that
the future Hassan II wanted, since up until then, actually, the sovereign was chosen by the oulemas [scholars of Islamic law]
...
" More precisely that meant "I
imagined, thought, and constructed this monarchy in each of its components, so that it would be lasting and undisputed
...
All his decisions are sacrosanct
...
Hassan II worshipped Alexandre Dumas,
whose property he renovated with his own funds
...
"
Hassan II, paraphrasing Dumas, could have affirmed that "History is
the coat-rack on which I hang the symbols and institutions that I
chose in order to legitimize and consolidate my power
...
A Moroccan intellectual, Abdallah Laroui, who nonetheless joined forces with Hassan
II, set up an enlightening analysis: "Reforms, often largely symbolic,
induced by the presence of foreigners, were wiped out, one after the
other […] The era of modernized thinking was finished
...
Thus in a series of
small maneuvers reconstituted ‘the Morocco that once was,’ demonstrated so many times by the the colonial administration to valorize its
comprehensive program of reforms
...
"!
Laroui puts equal emphasis on the fact that the reconstruction of
the power élite [makhzen] "obeys the identical logic of the protectorate, as it was established by Lyautey
...
"!
In 1994, at a colloquium, Hassan pronounces a royal message containing one of the Prophet's hadiths: "Whoever obeys me, obeys God
...
" None of his decisions would
be challenged and, in order to insure that his power was undisputed
and his legitimacy unchallenged, he fell back on three pillars of support
...
The day of the king's coronation,
the leaders of all the tribes, the army, the police, the government and
other dignitaries showed their allegiance by bowing when the king
passed by on horseback
...
!
The second pillar: he establishes, in the Constitution, an Article 19
that confers on him full powers as the "supreme representative
...
He
21 Abdallah Laroui, Les Origines sociales et culturelles du nationalisme marocain,” Paris, La Dé-
couverte, 1977
...
Plundering Morocco
himself edits the other articles of the Constitution, divides and limits
the powers of all concerned except for himself and those close to
him
...
!
The third pillar: all official texts, whether it is the Constitution, royal
decrees or even the promulgation of a new financial law, refer in their
preamble to the king as "Commander of the faithful," a political, religious, and social rank that makes of the king the supreme leader of
Muslims
...
He is the protector of the rights and freedoms of its citizens, its social groups and communities
...
" This title, Amir al-Mouminine, refers back to a
tradition that allows him, beyond the religious and spiritual authority
conferred on him, the balance of political power
...
In addition, he decides on the selection of
judges, on the justification for specific projects, and the eventual possibility of the dissolution of Parliament
...
!
By habitually referring back to the past and to tradition in order to
bestow coherence and legitimacy on the institution of the monarchy
that he put together, Hassan II turns it into an instrument of absolute
obedience to which each subject is bound
...
Take the case of my family, the Alawites
...
Then, one
year, the harvests were destroyed by swarms of grasshoppers
...
So we go to consult my ancestors who descended
from the Prophet, we ask them to take over
...
"22!
!
Punctilious, implacably watchful over the respect for and implementation of the prerogatives that he himself instituted, he becomes the
puppeteer pulling the strings
...
A few were talking among themselves, but most were waiting
patiently
...
It was 2 in the afternoon
...
Hassan II was getting up, his right hand extended, and each courtesan moved forward, one after the other, to
kiss it in reverence
...
"Ah, you've arrived, we're going
on a drive
...
"!
He turned around, his glance taking in the petrified members of the
Court, and abruptly he pointed to three people of them
...
You are slightly overweight, but try to
squeeze in
...
Hassan had built
a fish hatchery and decided, that very day, to fish for trout at the edge
of a man-made lake
...
After five casts, he issued an order to the servant: "Bring me the
22 Interview with Eric Laurent, Bouznika, 1996
...
Plundering Morocco
black fishing rod
...
they don't want to obey me!"23!
!
Ten days later, the palace in Marrakech
...
Hassan's relationship with his army is
marked by mistrust ever since the two military coups d'état attempted
against him
...
The
king's hand rests on the man's shoulder, tapping him lightly on the
cheek as if he were a child: "So, here's the little general who wanted
to visit his family…Well, consider it granted, I am authorizing you to
take leave
...
Hassan II calls out to those accompanying him: "I will see you
later
...
No one had bothered to light the room,
unless an order comes down from on high…!
The waiting time that Hassan traditionally imposed on his guests is
seen as a (perverse) signal that he is sending them
...
Three or four hours
of waiting indicates to the interested party that the king is not happy
but that a return to grace is still possible
...
!
This was how the man who was his right arm, General Oufkir, waited for an entire day, like his successor, Ahmed Dlimi, who was assassinated immediately afterward
...
!
23 Remarks obtained by Eric Laurent, Ifrane, 1992
...
26
We are at the palace in Rabat, and it was slightly past 1 pm
...
Without so much as a look or a word for the young man who was standing
in front of the door waiting for him, wearing a traditional djellaba
...
Four hours later, the crown prince was
still standing at attention, in the same place
...
!
!
"A Mistake of Chromosones"!
The future king was born in 1963, at the same time as his father
had his back to the wall and was forced to confront growing unrest
within the country, as well as unrest from outside the country, notably
Algeria
...
!
Hassan II raised his son strictly, with corporal punishment, kept an
eye on him constantly, and in proportion as he showed deep attachment for his grand-children, he was a difficult and distant father
...
He said to them: 'What you've been subjected to
were not screams of pain, merely a show for the audience
...
"25!
The crown prince did not seem to have been the favorite child of his
father
...
!
!
In 1998, Hassan II was ill, avoiding even those associates closest
to him, those court jesters who amused him up until then
...
27
The Predator-King
...
Death, which obsesses him, permeates the palace
...
At that
very moment, he is caught in his own trap
...
And, out of concern for the
stability of the monarchy, he reluctantly followed through on the
choice he had made
...
When I asked him "Is
it reassuring for you to know that your succession is unfolding in a
stable manner?" and he gave a scathing answer: "Right up till the end
I'm asking myself about that, and despite what it seems, my choice of
successor has not been definitively made…" He paused in order to
strengthen the impact of his words, and added: "Nothing in the world
would make me want this country to be a victim of a mistake in chromosomes
...
!
!
The all-powerful politics that Hassan II will bequeath to his successor is reinforced by already significant economic and financial leverage
...
The good will
of the king is evident in that domain as well: the most lucrative public
enterprises wind up under his control, but in each case, as the Moroccan press emphasizes, at the instruction of the Palace, with "the
full agreement of public authorities
...
!
26 Remarks obtained by Eric Laurent, Rabat, 1998
...
Already a player in every sector of the Moroccan economy, the ONA extends its control in the years ahead, increasing its size and scope
considerably
...
In the agricultural sector, the ONA re-acquires not
only the Central dairy industry, Lesieur Cristal, and Cosumar, but also
banks, real estate, chemistry, mines…!
Robert Assaraf, who was one of the leaders of this group, will later
explain, without realizing the full impact of his statement: "The idea
was to 'moroccanize' a maximum of industries considered critical to
Morocco's development
...
"27
However, the main purpose of the group's directors, who were all accomplished brokers, is to please the sovereign while maximizing profits
...
Between
1981 and 1985, the ONA increases by seven-fold its revenues
...
28!
It is easy to understand why
...
This is easily
explained by the fact that companies such as Cosumar, which holds
the sugar monopoly, the Central dairy industry, which holds the milk
monopoly, or Lesieur Cristal, which has the oil monopoly, operate in
markets where products are subsidized
...
This system of subsidies, officially called a Compensation
27 Fahd Iraqi, “Il était une fois l’ONA,” Tel Quel, no
...
28 Ibid
...
Plundering Morocco
Fund, intended to avoid social upheaval, contributes, above and beyond anything else, to increasing the king's wealth
...
Shortly thereafter, he will
name his son-in-law, Fouad Filali, to lead the group
...
!
Throughout the years, Morocco becomes more and more a country
of smoke and mirrors in which political life and the functioning of the
market economy are little more than illusions
...
This is
no longer the case today, in the framework of the control strategy put
into place by his successor
...
The same man who had plotted the
shape the monarchy would assume, does the same thing with political life
...
I turned to Ali Yata, who was seated at my
side, and I said to him: 'You're going to create a communist party
which you will head
...
This was an operation which
Mehdi Ben Barka, his ex-professor of mathematics turned chief opponent, summed up in a scathing way: "You bow your head, you kiss
his hand, and you end up being well-rewarded
...
m
...
Sudden29 Interview with Eric Laurent, Skhirat, 1993
...
I organized a dinner with the Prime Minister and the
leaders of the more important political parties
...
What day?" He was literally gloating
...
"There's no urgency, don't worry
...
m
...
m
...
I push open the
door, I discover old men dozing off in their armchairs
...
" "No problem," he responds rubbing his eyes to wake himself up, "We were
having a discussion while awaiting your arrival
...
When Hassan II decides it is the moment to hold general elections, and the electoral campaign is in full swing, he arrives on a golf
course, followed by his son
...
"No? Well, you did the right thing
...
How do you expect me to convince the people to go and
vote with such incompetents?" !
What a marvelous democratic outburst! While his father was on the
green, the future Mohammed VI comes up to me
...
" He leans towards me,
smiling
...
"31!
In reality, despite their differences, the two men are cut from the
same cloth -- the kind that belongs to leaders who knows that they
are above the law and have to answer to no one
...
31 Remarks obtained by Eric Laurent, Bouznika, 1994
...
Plundering Morocco
structed a power-base that was absolute and unfettered which never
ceased to amaze the man who, in turn, would later wield that same
power
...
The rights of the sovereign are thus regarded as "inviolable and sacrosanct
...
"The pride of my regime," affirmed Hassan II,
"are the dams that I had constructed throughout the country
...
In certain years, 40% of the State budget would be allocated to these
projects
...
It is he alone who selects the
areas where the dams will be constructed and decides the number of
acres that will be irrigated
...
!
In a country where three quarters of agricultural enterprises have
less than 12
...
Despite the fact that he claims to have not
the slightest knowledge of how many acres of land belong to the royal
Domains, nor what their value is, Najib Akesbi does admit to having
arrived at an interesting computation: the properties which disappeared from official registries after Moroccan independence
...
3 acre
lots, notably during periods of social tension when Hassan II was trying to calm the population
...
32!
In the final calculations then, between 988,400 and 1,111,900 acres
were never recovered by the State, becoming the focus of illegal
transfers between colonists and Moroccans
...
It is a
sensitive subject in an agricultural country where the slightest implication of royal confiscation could have vast political and social consequences
...
Aside from the World Bank,
committed to financing the dams, France is, by the nature of its relationship with Morocco, one of the chief lenders
...
Since 1990, French funding is as much as one billion francs, a figure
which doubles after 1995
...
France is also the primary bilateral lender of funds in the country, in the name of public assistance for development, with 50% of the
total amount
...
!
Thus, in 2001 Proparco invests French taxpayers' money, to the
tune of $206,352,000, notably in the mining group Managem, which
32 Interview with the authors, Rabat, September 2011
...
Plundering Morocco
belongs to the king, for the exploitation of a gold mine southeast of
Agadir
...
During that period, Proparco is a partner in
Upline Technologies as well, an investment company created by a
commercial bank and belonging to the group Upline, one of whose
"hidden" shareholders is the king's own brother, prince Moulay
Rachid
...
The politicians in charge, who came along one right
after the other, whether on the right or the left, were all guilty of passively accepting this code of silence
...
Thus, protected from critics and outside pressure, the king and his
entourage were able to indulge in every excess without running any
risk
...
" Hassan II could have stated a paraphrase of that: "Give me a
man and I will create a sycophant
...
Every year, on December 31st, the king organized
an immense party for the New Year
...
I (Eric Laurent) was present at the one of these evening galas
and I can confirm that the sight of all this was particularly obscene
...
!
During the meal, servants in uniform carrying baskets filled with
gifts were literally jostled about by the guests who were pushing their
way through, minutes later, to grab the most gifts they could
...
34
II did not appear once but no one doubted that, although sheltered
from staring guests, he must have been observing this scene with
satisfaction
...
!
IV
...
The event occurs between March 19 and 22, 2000,
or six months after his coronation as sovereign, following a long private visit for about 10 days in Courchevel where he owns a chalet
...
!
He could count on a certain personalities regarding him favorably,
such as the journalist Jean-Marie Cavada, who managed to organize
a strictly informal meeting for him with a handful of French journalists
in an elegant Paris hotel
...
People
willingly went out of their way to chat with the new king of Morocco
...
Initially scheduled to last about 15 minutes, it would not
end until two hours of casual conversation had passed
...
Taken aback, this close friend of the king's answered him essentially
in this way: "Don't even think about it! His image and his reputation
would be ruined
...
Plundering Morocco
This reply was staggering and did nothing but feed the rumors
about Mohammed VI's limited intellectual baggage
...
A key figure in Hassan II's hierarchy was thus relegated to a secondary level, despite his innumerable declarations saying "the king told me": André Azoulay, a
French-Moroccan, formerly of Paribas and Eurocom
...
The first Moroccan Jew to hold such office, he distinguished himself as much through his notorious wheeling and dealing
as by the quality of his relations in the world of French media
...
Honors go to the most despised among
them: Driss Basri, the feared Minister of the Interior under Hassan II
for almost three decades
...
These epithets are, for the most part, justified
...
He would pay dearly for that
...
"34!
The disdain of the two ranking generals for Driss Basri was as
strong as what Mohammed VI felt for him: in his eyes, the Minister of
the Interior was little more than an over-seer following his father's orders
...
!
A military man will testify, years later, having witnessed entire cartons of documents removed from the Ministry of the Interior and piled
up inside trucks
...
He will spend the remaining years
of his life, with bitterness, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris
...
!
Although he threatened to publish his Memoirs on numerous occasions, Basri never took that step, as others before him had not
...
He passed away on August 27,
2007, at 68 years of age and was buried in Morocco 48 hours later
...
!
Hassan II's other security pillar met a better fate
...
As
was reported in the magazine Tel Quel in 2010: "In spring of 2000,
while M6 was on an official visit to Egypt, a communication arrived
from the Palace announcing the news in one laconic sentence: Médiouri has been removed from his duties as director of royal Security
...
35 Hassan Hamdani et Mehdi Sekkouri Alaoui, “Le Jour où Hassan II est mort,” TelQuel, no
...
37
The Predator-King
...
!
According to the ex-journalist from Le Monde, Jean-Pierre Tuquoi,
who in 2001 published Le Dernier Roi,36 a documented work which
provoked a furious reaction in Rabat, two individuals in particular
whom the crown prince frequented caused serious headaches for the
royal security forces
...
The second was a
Pakistani woman, Myriam who had married an American convert to
Islam
...
Jean-Pierre Tuquoi mentions as well "a family of Italian origin,"
the Orlandos, with Catherine and two of her brothers, Frédéric and
Dominique, whose visits set off alarms for the security services of the
Palace
...
!
!
For the time being, the settling of scores had to remain secret
...
There was no question of soiling the practically spotless reputation enjoyed by Mohammed VI, enhanced by a
touching awkwardness during his first appearances in the role of king
...
The reality, of course, is an entirely different affair
...
38
ally, if he does not show the same arrogance as his father, Mohammed VI likes luxury and certainly leads the life of a sultan…
...
Every morning, or nearly, he demands to be shown
several cars from his collection, about ten, in order to choose the one
he will use
...
Moreover, it was at the wheel of one of his high-speed roadsters
that he gestures to one of the courtiers surrounding him upon whom
he looks with favor, which one will sit next to him
...
!
!
The Monarchy of The Old Boys Network…!
In proportion as the older men from the Hassanian era were put out
to pasture, a group of young ones who are the same age as Mohammed VI take more and more control of the country
...
!
Who are these young people? They are either childhood friends, or
guests at the evening parties thrown by the crown prince
...
And he does not want to
be judged
...
He himself lacks character and, as a
logical consequence, he surrounded himself with men who resembled
him,37 as a shrewd observer of the Moroccan power elite observed
...
!
The first one, which was the best-known, was from the royal College, founded in 1942, under the French protectorate
...
When
37 Interview with one of the authors, Casablanca, September 2011
...
304, Decem-
ber 29, 2007 - January 11, 2008
...
Plundering Morocco
his turn came, in 1973, Hassan II created a class for his own son
made up of 12 students, all of whom came from the inner circle or
from modest backgrounds
...
It was unthinkable that the future king be
accompanied, in his schooling, by the sons of unsavory individuals
...
The fact remains that an iron-clad discipline had been imposed on him during his early years in school
...
m
...
The only concession made to the future king,
who was far from brilliant at math: from 1977 on, the scholastic program was adapted to his preferences, and became more literary
...
It actually leads to the departure of two students who were skilled in math, replacing them with two other youngsters who, over the years, would become the closest friends of Mohammed Vi
...
Both were
from modest families and well aware of the opportunity that had been
offered them
...
Exasperated by his
rival, Chraïbi throws this out one day to the king, referring to El Him-
39 Ibid
...
He's worse than
Oufkir!"!
This allusion was extremely serious: after years of good and loyal
service, General Oufkir had actually attempted to overthrow Hassan II
in a failed military coup d'état in August 1972
...
!
!
This quarrel and protective warning -- it supposedly had a long history behind it -- caused Chraïbi to be distanced from the Palace for
some time
...
During the summer of 2011, he manages to get rid of (albeit temporarily) an nth rival, Mohamed Moatassim, a well-known legal expert highly appreciated royal advisor, from
the inner circle
...
!
!
Strengthened by his apprenticeship of several years at the Ministry
of the Interior, directed at the time by Driss Basri, Fouad Ali El Himma
felt the urge, early on, to go into teaching
...
"40 It was exactly the opposite of Yassine Mansouri who, on the
other hand, was rigorous," added Basri of his own volition, alluding to
that other member of the royal College who heads the DGED (Direc40 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, 2008
...
Plundering Morocco
tion Générale des Etudes et de la Documentation, which was essentially Moroccan external instruction)
...
"In Rabat, the crown prince and his friends very often
went to the fashionable night club, L'Amnésia
...
Thus, the future king and his cohorts were able to get into the VIP
lounge without passing through the entrance for the general public
...
Many sleepless nights
drove Hassan II to the point of crying out from his very core upon
learning that his son intended to name El Himma as director of the
cabinet: "He needs serious people around him
...
According to the journalist and famous Moroccan commentator,
Khalid Jamaï, the crown prince's friend willingly made contact with
journalists in order to praise the king's qualities: he was young, modern, tolerant, and keen on democracy
...
After some criticism about His
Majesty's entourage, those insolent journalists will be punished: prohibiting the opposition's magazine, Le Journal, in October 2000, closing of the satirical review Demain, in 2003, and sentencing its director, Ali Lmrabet, to three years in prison without parole
...
This was a first for the international community
...
42
According to the the consensus of several journalists, Fouad Ali El
Himma played a major role in this serious turn of the security screw
...
!
Since the time during which these episodes occurred, his relations
with the independent press were strained, and hardly improved either
with those surrounding the monarch or with highly-placed bureaucrats
...
!
But the life of those who surrounded the king danced to the rhythm
of his whims, and El Himma himself did not avoid this
...
A violent argument set him against
the new director of the DST (Direction Générale de la Surveillance du
Territoire, or the internal security forces), Abdelatif Hammouchi, whom
he saw as one of those responsible for his being marginalized
...
The Court is a world of warmed-over hatred
...
Contrary to his rival El Himma, Majidi
did not come out of the ranks of the royal College but from another
clique equally important in the eyes of the king: the one surrounding
his beloved cousin Naoufel Osman, who died prematurely of an illness in 1992
...
Their son was raised in the U
...
, far
43
The Predator-King
...
!
"Basically, Naoufel and his group, whose hard core consisted of five
or six party-goers, were a breath of fresh air that changed things a little for the prince from what he knew at the royal College and the
classmates with whom he was constantly," recounts a man who was
once part of that group
...
And it was
precisely because of his good grades in school that he managed to
infiltrate right to the very heart of the monarchy
...
At the time, Naoufel's parents decided to open a school in their own home so that their son would be
surrounded by children other than those of the Rabat élite
...
!
Ahmed Osman was a creation of Hassan II, who was singly responsible for crafting his political career
...
Successful in his role-casting, Mounir Majidi thus is soon asked to
leave the family home and move in with the Osmans
...
!
42 Interview with one of the authors, Casablanca, July 2011
...
323, May 10 -
16, 2008
...
often invites
him over, and it is in this way that the future Mohammed VI lands up
with his clique from the royal College
...
After
two years spent in the US, where he got his MBA, and then a degree
in computer studies at Strasbourg, Majidi returns to his country where
he launches a career as a technocrat, moving from the royal holding
company ONA to the CDG, the deposit and management fund of Morocco, which was the equivalent of the French Caisse des dépôts et
consignations
...
!
!
Like the royal College clan, the group of Naoufel's friends is riddled
with internecine warring of which Hassan Bernoussi will be at the receiving end
...
"Hassan was the most loyal
among all of those surrounding Mohammed VI during the time he was
crown prince
...
"44 It was an unsubstantiated claim which might be explained by the fact that in 1997 and 1998 it was rumored that Hassan
Bernoussi was expected to become the future Minister of Finances in
the kingdom…
...
!
!
!
!
44 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, November 2011
...
Plundering Morocco
Majidi -- In Debt to The Emirs of The Gulf!
One of Majidi's friends who also wished to remain anonymous, remembers that he actually began to acquire power when he was
named personal secretary to the king
...
Fairly quickly, this secretarial post began to operate
both as a private bank and a public relations facilitator, particularly
with the Emirs, such as Sheik Hamdane, who would become the
crown prince of Dubaï and Qatar
...
”45!
Introduced to sensitive missions, and surrounded by enemies
among whom was Fouad Ali El Himma, who sought to entrap him,
Majidi learned quickly not to leave any traces for others to see
...
46 But it is of special note that Mounir Majidi trembled with fear at the slightest mood change of his boss, whose
fits of anger are legendary, and not only because of the occasional
physical punishments that he inflicted
...
!
!
Fouad Ali El Himma and the group from the royal College, Mounir
and those in Naoufel's clique…
...
!
In Paris as in Rabat, rare were the men and women who pointed
out the risks inherent in this power-play where friendship and connections took precedence over competence
...
46 Interview with the authors, Casablanca, September 2011
...
For him "it was only a relative success for those revelers who spent their lives partying […], but who
had absolutely no experience in government
...
Their success, however relative it might be, went to their head, unfortunately and they believed that they had won the fight
...
" A prescient analysis
...
From Palace to Poultry Pen!
!
At the beginning of Mohammed VI's reign, the royal holding company ONA, of which the king and his family hold the majority shares,
was not doing well
...
A year earlier, in
1999, it had to borrow $64,485,000 from the banks in order to ward
off a financial magnate, Othman Benjalloun, who had just launched a
stock market raid on the SNI, another royal holding company
...
!
Nicknamed "Mourad II"49 by his employees, referring to the Ottoman
caliph Mourad I, Chérif was struck by a syndrome of severe lack of
confidence and self-sufficiency, and had no qualms about following in
the footsteps of the power elite, the makhzen: obsequious with the
47 The first name has been changed
...
49 Nicolas Beau and Catherine Graciet, op
...
47
The Predator-King
...
And it is in this way that he deliberately has the directors of Danon wait for two hours before receiving
them despite the fact that they were long associated with the ONA at
the very core of Morocco's central dairy operation
...
Mourad Chérif was fixated on a business vision he has in mind for the group he directed
...
The alliances forged by Hassan II with the cement manufacturer Lafarge and with Danon were
productive ones
...
That reflex is not uncommon with
those among the power elite shock troops who studied in France or
who maintained strong ties with the ex-colonial power
...
Mourad
Chérif was thus not innovating anything new in this field, but proved
particularly adept at protecting French interests in Morocco
...
!
Along the same lines, the ONA sells about 10 giant Marjane superstores to the Auchan group for a price that once again will be perceived as much too low
...
The stock
prices for the ONA fell by 40% and the holding company folds under a
record debt
...
!
!
Darkening still further the beginnings of this new reign, the Palace
maintains tense relations with Moroccan management which is, nonetheless, barring a few exceptions, known for its easy-going style
...
But
you must also understand the management’s position
...
51 In view of the urgency of the matter, public
funds are released as soon as possible and the miracle happens:
management begins to return the monies invested abroad to Morocco
...
!
!
An Investment Strike Artificially Created from the Ground up!
The King's men, notably Fouad Ali El Himma, Deputy Minister of
the Interior, and Mounir Majidi, His Majesty's private secretary, converted this supposed management affair into a windfall
...
"It's not true" one of them objected
...
51 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, October 2011
...
Plundering Morocco
outlook in which profit-making potential was seen as weak
...
"52!
This manipulation did not come about by chance
...
Mohammed VI did not hide the fact from his entourage that it was one of
his priorities, and if one were associated with this effort, it would
prove a useful way of obtaining the sultan's favor
...
The selection of this man, smooth and discreet, whom Hassan II's Minister
of the Interior Driss Basri claimed to have discovered in 1995, is not
without relevance
...
He maintained his career as head of a shoe manufacturing company and accrued political powers without acquiring the
reputation of a wheeler-dealer
...
In succession,
first as Minister of Commerce and Industry, then as Minister of Finances, Jettou was generally regarded as competent
...
"53!
As lackluster as ever, he plowed ahead with his mission: sketching
out the lines of the ONA's new strategy, which would define the new
reign
...
!
52 Interview with the authors, Casablanca, September 2011
...
50
The task would prove difficult
...
Certain managers were not paying out salaries, and security forces
would periodically intervene to calm those who objected
...
54!
"Jettou determined that the ONA and thus the monarch must not be
major actors in the economy, but that the royal holding company had
to confine itself to being an investment company," added the Moroccan manager whom we cited above
...
One
year later, in 2001, he is abruptly named Minster of the Interior
...
He believed that he had acquired the
basics of the job managing the royal fortune through his contact with
Jettou
...
His boyish face and thick black eyebrows
gave him the look of a labrador retriever, which should not be misleading: intellectually superior to the mediocre individuals who surrounded Mohammed VI, this man was discretion itself
...
He put in place the beginnings of
an impeccable career: the Ecole polytechnique et Mines in France,
an engineering position with Schlumberger, his return to Morocco in
1992, and a position with the BMCE bank where he was noticed by
one of Mounir Majidi's colleagues
...
51
The Predator-King
...
"55!
In 2001, no one suspected the major role that Hassan Bouhemou
would play in Mohammed VI's vast and predatory enterprise
...
!
!
At the time, the duo Majidi-Bouhemou was confronted with a problem by the name of Driss Jettou
...
It was a strategy that put them at the
exact opposite pole to what Driss Jettou had in mind
...
With the distance of several years,
they noticed that the "national champion" is, as a matter of fact, a
business in which the king is a shareholder and which agrees to develop only within the context of a monopoly or, if push came to shove,
a semi-monopoly…
...
!
In order to convince Mohammed VI to rally behind the concept of
"national champions," which had not yet entered its phase of implementation, the infernal duo did not hesitate to explain to the king that
his businesses would allow for the creation of numerous new jobs
...
52
El Himma's Fit of Jealous Rage!
As far as politics was concerned, an area in which neither man had
any leverage, the situation grew worse
...
Legislative elections took place in September but, contrary to what was usually done, Mohammed VI did not
choose his Prime Minister from one of the two main political camps,
the Istiqlal (conservative) and the USFP (Union Socialiste des Forces
Popularistes)
...
!
This nomination took more than one person by surprise -- the man
was backed by no party -- but it was nonetheless perceived as a gesture of openness and dialogue
...
It should be stated that the network
connections previously noted had numerous ramifications
...
Moreover, he enjoyed the support of the business world whose leaders saw in him one of their own, but he was also viewed as the representative of the Berbers
...
He knew better than anyone
else that, in order to evolve and endure at the heart of this system,
you had to let go of all sorts of ego-involvement
...
Whenever he sensed that a
rival was moving up, El Himma seethed with jealousy towards that
man
...
Plundering Morocco
organized by El Himma, the monarch's old buddy
...
Jettou will nonetheless hold power until
2007, the date at which he is relieved of his duties
...
A witness who worked alongside the royal advisor during that
time remembers the violence of his remarks: "Jettou is a real bastard
who pretends that all the king's initiatives came from him," he is supposed to have said one day
...
He had just about
stopped seeing him at all
...
Thus, in 2006, it was "revealed"56 that
the Prime Minister had used the full weight of his influence to protect
the ex-directors of the Office Chérifien des Phosphates (OCP), set up
by the new management who claims to have discovered horrendous
financial mismanagement
...
!
!
Terrorism Rears Its Ugly Head!
A major event in the recent history of Morocco will temporarily put
an end to the confrontations within the makhzen
...
!
56 Paul Héauduc, “Les gros sabots de Driss Jettou,” Bakchich, June 27, 2007
...
!
Those in charge of Security, and first among them, general Hamidou Laanigri, who was director of the DST, immediately pointed their
fingers at the vague terrorist network of Al-Qaida and one Oussama
Ben Laden, still glorified for the 9/11 attacks
...
In those tenements, the families who had each come into the city from the countryside were living cramped together, and their young people could
not eke out a place for themselves within the urban fabric
...
!
The unbearable images of the wounded and the corpses deeply
shocked Moroccan public opinion
...
But it was in appearance only
...
!
First of all, this occurred in the form of isolated criminal acts, such
as the one on March 23, 2002, when a drunk was stoned to death in
the middle of the street by a "cell" run by a preacher who also was
connected to the emirs
...
It intended to blow up an American naval vessel
crossing through the Straits of Gibraltar
...
Massive bloodshed had just barely been prevented
...
176
...
Plundering Morocco
Whether local or imported terrorism, Morocco was at the crossroads, and had been for a long time, even if la dolce vita that defined
the king's life caused people to forget or become complacent
...
security forces could not overlook the fact that, in the 1980s, no
fewer than 70 Moroccans left for Afghanistan to fight the Russians
alongside the Afghan moudjahadin
...
!
!
"They're Forcing Us to Return to The Era of Oufkir"!
The disorder and confusion that reigned in Morocco during that period worked in favor of Fouad Ali El Himma, who, despite his limited
expertise in terms of the struggle against terrorism, plotted behind the
scenes to get involved with the issues
...
We
learn from it that, for El Himma, "these attacks stained the image of
'the Moroccan exception' in matters of security, and that His Majesty
could do nothing less than take appropriate measure during the next
few weeks
...
They
are pressuring us to go back to Oufkir's time
...
His
fury unleashed, the duly chosen Interior Minister also takes it out on
those that he considers responsible for advancing and promoting a
violent ideology
...
" As far as Arab financing is concerned, El Himma prioritizes
the Saudi associations which, according to him, "are probably acting
with the consent of a portion of the [intelligence] services
...
And it is not exactly good news for the generals and others like
Hamidou Laanigri, director of the DST, who is extremely jealous of
their royal privileges
...
" But that he would "do it
in stages, without rocking the boat
...
!
The first "victim" of the purge was General Harchi, a specialist in
radical Islam, who was fired from the DGED and replaced by a civilian, Yassine Mansouri, whose main qualification was that he studied
at the royal College with Mohammed VI
...
Then, in July 2006,
it is General Belbachir's turn, who directed military information services, to be forced into retirement immediately following a peculiar affair tied to a terrorist group named Ansar al-Mahdi
...
57
The Predator-King
...
He is promoted to inspector general of the auxiliary forces, in other words, the ranks of security agents who are sent out during
protests…The confessions of a drug lord having spilled the beans on
one of his own men, and who held the strategic job as head of security for the royal palaces, were utilized to have him removed from power
...
More powerful than the others, he was still running the royal gendarmerie, which safeguards the king's security when he is on the
road…!
!
!
!
VI
...
One observer called
this system "voluntary slavery
...
He is the absolute master, and if one manages
to slip into the system, one can eventually claim to rule with the same
intransigence over an entire network of the faithful and the collaborators
...
!
Actually, Mohammed VI looks very little like the crown prince that he
was
...
!
The arrival on the the throne of a new monarch is always accompanied by a period of uncertainty that lends itself to all kinds of opportunities
...
And just as much as his political power, his economic power fascinated these men -- albeit weakened and misguided, the ONA remained a sprawling, forceful presence
...
!
!
Artificially constructing a conspiracy from the ground up is often the
best method of hiding the fact that there actually is one being plotted
...
And notably the ONA
...
Truth rarely penetrates
this closed, hushed and openly paranoid world that is the royal
Palace, and often, manipulators needed only to present their arguments skillfully and nimbly in order to obtain their goals
...
The king was thus informed that the French had even already
chosen their man to put at the head of the ONA when they had succeeded in pulling it off -- a puppet director who would be entirely at
their command
...
!
59
The Predator-King
...
In fact, by putting into operation their strategy for a rise to
power, Bernoussi, seen by them as being too close to the king, was
an obstacle
...
He persists, even today, in attending them assiduously and, as proof of the same constancy, the king, with whom he had been so close, persists in disdainfully ignoring him
...
!
At the head of Siger, the royal holding company, this 43-year old
technocrat with an aggressive, if not cutting, manner, is described by
one of those who worked with him on key royal affairs, as "intelligent,
complex, machiavellian, a genuine cynic
...
"An incredible hatred," according to one of
those who was with him during those years
...
"59!
In 2003, Bouhemou is named to the head of the SNI (Société Nationale d'investissement), a holding company that, along with Siger, is
the king's financial lever and the major shareholder of the ONA group
...
60
From then on, the man is set up at the very center of royal power and
knows every secret -- or nearly
...
A
discourse of a somewhat shady nationalism whose only purpose was
to hide the extent of royal predatory activity
...
Their objective is to impose a new kind of pressure on the French
groups, a balance of power based on one unwavering principle:
henceforth, we are running things
...
When he was ousted in 2002, his fall from grace already
was in large part due to the arguments advanced by Majidi and
Bouhemou: he had given the store away to the French…
...
Cherif expressed
unbounded admiration for the French capitalist system, becoming
friendly with numerous major employers in France
...
"!
Thus, the agreement signed with Auchan anticipated, from the beginning, a reapportionment of the capital on a 50-50 basis, an action
not well-received in high places
...
61
The Predator-King
...
60 This was a mistake that Majidi was successful at turning into an act of negligence
...
Spiteful information and well-manipulated accusations are what most often deal fatal
blows
...
He saw in Majidi a faded personality, a mere pawn who was acting at the behest of royal whims,
without ever having noticed for a single instant the unbridled ambition
and rise to power of the king's secretary
...
But they
still had to manufacture the event which would cause his certain
demise
...
That year, Cherif came to inaugurate a gold mining complex belonging to Managem, an affiliate of
the royal holding company
...
!
In so doing, he crossed the red line, kicking and screaming
...
He brought
back all kinds of anecdotes that he willingly exaggerated in order to
better show how Cherfi had acted in an unforgivable manner, playing
at being the calif
...
!
!
From 2005 on, the ONA goes after the French group Axa
...
The two Moroccan negotiators seek to impose their conditions
62
on the total repurchase of Axa, but Bébéar insists on official recognition of the group
...
!
Jean-René Fourtou, the ex-president of Vivendi, who frequently resides in Morocco, then acts as arbiter between the two camps…who
have a great deal for which to reproach themselves
...
!
In this unfavorable setting, the men of the Palace made a radical
decision: they would develop the company Wafa Assurances, a direct
competitor to Axa Maroc, which they had seized when BCM (Banque
Commerciale du Maroc) and Wafa Bank (with which Wafa Assurance
was affiliated) merged
...
" In 2007, finally, the ONA
leaves Axa Maroc, forcing the French group to buy back the totality of
the royal shares
...
The French
mass-market giant owns a major piece of the Acima supermarket
chain and the Marjane "mega-markets," two stars of the royal holding
company
...
This was a decision that marginalized Auchan
and challenged the protocol signed in 2000 that anticipated joint control and parity of the two enterprises
...
The directors of Auchan, demonstrating
an astonishing naïveté, if not a complete ignorance of the reality of
the country, then request that the dispute be resolved through the arbitrage procedure outlined in the protocol
...
Plundering Morocco
The arbitrage court, composed of three arbiters, one for each side
plus a president designated by the commercial court of Casablanca,
ruled against the French, of course, by affirming that "the provisions
of the 2000 protocol are null and void with regard to the dispute
...
It is in
total contradiction with all the practices of international law and with
those decisions of Moroccan and international judicial experts whom
we consulted on this matter
...
"61!
Auchan plays for time, deciding to remain, and in 2007, the two
camps arrive at an agreement which reflects Auchan's departure and
selling off its 49% share in the ONA
...
and a free hand to royal strategists
...
Until then, the general purchasing agency of
Auchan supplied the mega-malls
...
It was a closedcircuit operation that reduced costs and increased profits
...
62!
To share this manna with a foreign group became unthinkable -and that was without taking into account that the potential for devel61 Elisabeth Studer, “Auchan: déconfiture au Maroc face à l’ONA,” www
...
com, Jan-
uary 23, 2007
...
64
opment of mass distribution was colossal: it represented, in 2006,
only 8% of Moroccan food products, valued between 140 and 150 billion dirhams
...
They
had little to do with those that prevailed in the prevailing market
economy
...
"64 As an epilogue to this show of power
towards French firms, a Moroccan administrator at the ONA throws
out this witticism: "When there's enough for two, there will be still
more for just one
...
A man close to both of them confided: "They have an astounding arrogance
...
" This attitude created
an enormous uneasiness in French economic milieux
...
It believed that the strong ties established between the king of Morocco
and Jacques Chirac constituted a kind of lightening rod that would
always protect them
...
!
63 Ibid
...
65
The Predator-King
...
The French Embassy in Rabat had to
face the complaints of French businessmen, and some among them,
introduced at the highest levels
...
Like those serial murder stories, each person was wondering
who would be the next victim, and it was not long before the name
was known
...
At the last
minute, it was decided to not go ahead with the eviction due to the
competition that its Moroccan counterpart would have to face
...
!
!
The King Does Not Listen to Chirac!
The French president was worried that these tensions would weigh
heavily on relations between the two nations
...
So he addressed himself to the favorite
sister of the king, Lalla Meryem, in order to ask her to intervene and
make her brother listen to reason
...
The king was determined
to increase his profits and did not particularly want to share them with
French groups
...
In other words,
Partners who had the same approach towards business management
as he did: the Emirate princes, for whom "royal assurance" was sufficient to close a deal
...
But how does that relate
to the actual economy when all of this is determined by the arbitrary
nature of royal power? As soon as someone speaks in the name of
the king, no one can take issue with it
...
If we are to believe Khalid
Oudghiri: "Justice does not require orders, it anticipates them
...
"!
!
François Mitterand, questioned as to his definition of power, replied:
"True power, is to be able to name
...
!
In truth, and this is what makes the power of his colleagues so exorbitant , the king names, but rarely makes the selection
...
All
share one characteristic: they are men from the court, or who hope to
become men of the court, and they know that whatever comes their
way from the palace can, at any moment, be taken away from them
...
And they had to
be vigilant since the slightest casting error in this scenario could
compromise the entire strategy
...
67
The Predator-King
...
This technocrat with a degree from the
American university Stanford, was upstanding enough but known for
a lack of charisma
...
Those who met him at the time say that he was living in a modest
apartment on a small salary
...
!
Mohammed VI's secretary chose to name him to the head of Primarios, the enterprise that provided furnishings to the palace
...
After having ousted Mourad Chérif, the less than
obliging manager of the ONA, Hokimi was viewed as the ideal successor
...
!
The objective from then on was to present the royal holding company as a modern, transparent group respecting all international
norms, further enhanced by numerous prestigious foreign partners
...
!
A serious person, for sure, but one who had no "stage" presence,
Hokimi's television appearances proved mediocre to the extent of
causing the king to burst into fits of rage
...
"!
This decision thrust Majidi and Bouhemou into a deep confusion
...
Yet the position was a vital one and they were worried about
plots that might fester in the heart of the Court, where they knew they
had made numerous enemies
...
!
!
68
It is in this way that their worst nightmare would become a reality
...
com,
which belonged to the Moroccan billionaire Othman Benjelloun
...
Bendidi did not hide his disdain for the man who watched over the royal fortune, along with Majidi, and he had no qualms about making private comments, knowing
that whatever he said would be widely repeated: "Bouhemou was a
minor executive who was working for me at the time I was directing
Benjelloun's bank
...
!
The two men needed three years of fierce undermining to finally
crucify Saâd Bendidi
...
!
Bendidi was denied the right to the classic expression of gratitude,
via a communiqué, for accomplishing his mission
...
The pretext: among the hundred
branches of the ONA, the one that revolved around the cell phone
company, Wana, which had suffered substantial losses
...
In this case, it involved allowing
him to gain a foothold in the rapidly growing sector of telecommunica69
The Predator-King
...
The company turned out to be a financial disaster, but it is always simpler to
blame one's own errors on one's adversaries
...
!
As soon as he assumed power, the president of the ONA, no matter
who that might have been, was little more than a pawn with scaled
back powers, since Majidi and Bouhemou were constantly tightening
the royal grip on the country's economy -- to the point of strangling it
...
!
!
In 2003, the two royal "architects" announced a startling initiative
indeed
...
And for a good reason: the 13% interest
held by the royal family in ONA was being transformed ipso facto into
more than 60% thanks to the magic of financial schemes and without
further infusion of new monies
...
!
It was not only a question of an osmosis between the monarchy
and business, but the birth of a politically new phenomenon: the king
would retain absolute power from now on, power that was of a godgiven, political,…
...
!
!
No Project without The King's Agreement!
The new ensemble was placed under the direction of Hassan
Bouhemou, and the ONA director, Bassim Jaï Hokimi, described the
70
operation which had just been put into place as a 'rotation of those in
charge
...
A
month before implementing this transaction, those heading the main
pension funds, MAMDA, RCAR, and CIMR, got the order to sell their
own shares in the royal holding company SIger to the ONA at a reduced rate
...
The message that was transmitted
made it known to the directors that their gesture would be perceived
as a gift intended for the crown prince…on the occasion of his birthday
...
!
As a result, the Palace became part of a kind of racketeering in
which the funds that were set aside for the retirement of millions of
Moroccans were bled dry
...
" The objective was, simply stated, to give Mohammed VI the financial maneuvering room he needed
...
"66!
The operation revealed, upon casual examination, that the independence of these funds was sheer fiction
...
!
This organism is, moreover, the largest institutional investor in the
country
...
71
The Predator-King
...
He provided all the guarantees that he would behave as expected
...
!
!
Since Mohammed VI took power, the CDG has often been pressed
into service for financial contribution to royal projects
...
The operation resulted in losses
of tens of thousands of euros, a loss which did not stop it from happening all over again with the German mega-corporation TUL, ending
in equally catastrophic results
...
And yet these were public funds that were put into use and
wiped out
...
!
The CDG is often increasingly associated with major projects developed by SNI-ONA, the royal holding company, following the 2003
reforms
...
First of all, it was a considerable source of financing, and then, its participation enabled the
principal players at the Palace to move ahead, incognito, falsely
claiming that the "impartial State" was acting through this agency,
...
Sparing the king from any confrontation was just as
important
...
Recently
...
The solution was rapidly
found
...
It immediately obtained approval…in order to provide new credits to the ONA
...
How to Manufacture Guilt!
!
This is the trajectory of a man whose rise and fall is emblematic of
the Palace’s mode of operation, the whims of the king, and the functioning of a judiciary completely at his command, all combined to create a guilty party in order to satisfy the desires of the sovereign and
his entourage
...
!
This graduate of the Central School, born in Fes in 1957, had dual
nationality (French-Moroccan) a not insignificant detail for truly understanding the rest of his story
...
(A minor addition without any
direct link to the affair: BNP-Paribas manages numerous accounts
belonging to the Moroccan royal family, a pattern begun during Hassan II’s era)
...
Majidi had
just dismissed the president of this bank belonging to the ONA
...
To whomever presented
himself as a candidate, he made the same remarks: "The king named
me to keep the machine going, to control the whole thing, and maximize profits
...
" For as long as anyone can
73
The Predator-King
...
!
!
Yet the choice made by Oudghiri will prove to be an unwise one
...
The man was far from naïve but he did not yet realize that he
was walking in the middle of a mine-field
...
The wait to see Mohammed VI was in vain
...
" The king was a solitary and unpredictable man, basically comfortable only in the company of his old friends from the royal College who became advisors, if
we do not count other personalities whose trajectories were more or
less unpredictable
...
Beyond that, the world did not seem to hold much interest
for him
...
!
He pulled off record profits as head of the royal bank but never received an audience with the sovereign
...
!
Khalid Oudghiri gradually discovered this trompe l'oeil universe: "I
thought I was running a private bank, I hadn't understood that, in fact,
it all was dependent on the will of the king
...
74
Mounir Majidi’s collaboration
...
!
!
Royal Favor And Disgrace!
In November 2003, while Moroccans were celebrating the end of
Ramadan, a real bombshell shook financial markets, but also touched
the economic and political leaders of the country
...
Negotiations took place in the greatest secrecy and even the Director of Wafabank was informed only a few minutes before the agreement was signed
...
It was a
wise choice
...
Once the contract was signed, for a price rumored to be lower than
the true value of the bank, it enabled Mohammed VI to get a piece of
the pie that eventually became the primary financial establishment in
the country
...
!
Favors granted to some by the king, like the disgrace he inflicted on
others, are worth mentioning here since they show the point to which
business decisions affected every one of these interventions
...
And it mattered little that the country
had neither the highway infrastructures nor the stadiums that would
allow for such a competition: the king had been convinced by his entourage that his kingdom had a good chance of being selected
...
Not that it mattered
...
Plundering Morocco
1200th anniversary of the city of Fez, complete with, once again, a
significant budget at his disposal
...
Completely at ease with
public funds, he went so far as to misplace a small briefcase containing millions of euros
...
!
!
Saâd Kettani's whims are, in reality, a replica of the king's
...
This graduate of the prestigious Central faculty system,
was general director of one of the branches of the CDG (Caisse de
dépôt et de gestation), in charge of the the hot springs medical spa in
Moulay Yacoub
...
At the end of the sovereign's visit, Benseddik
approached him, in fact, to ask for his intervention in order to arrive at
a solution for various things that had not been working
...
!
Mohammed VI, taken aback at first, listened to his remarks attentively, and Benseddik, delighted, took a magazine from the Ecole
Centrale out of his pocket in order to show the king a photo of a
young Franco-Moroccan student from the school who had climbed Mt
Everest and planted the Moroccan flag at its summit
...
!
76
Several days later, he received a letter informing him of his immediate dismissal, without compensation "for having harassed the king
and having lacked respect for the highest authorities of the country
...
He discovered the arbitrariness of royal power and soon experienced the
closing of all kinds of doors in his face
...
He plucked up his courage,
sought out one of the king's advisors, who listened to him and thereupon discussed it with Mohammed VI, explaining to him that Benseddik was at the origin of the idea
...
Benseddik lit up when he heard the news, believing that he had been
rehabilitated and traveled to promote his project
...
!
Ahmed Benseddik - ingenuous man that he was, did not realize the
scheme that was being plotted behind his back
...
He informed the king of what
happened, and Benseddik's fate is thus sealed
...
!
For Benseddik, brutally cast aside, it proved to be a total collapse
...
He ran out of
77
The Predator-King
...
But, in the
course of his long quest to obtain justice, he acquired confidential information that demonstrated the silent and arbitrary quality surrounding the granting of privileges and the mechanics of corruption
...
Additionally, he gains the confidence of Brahim Frej,
the ex-chamberlain to Hassan II, still in that post under Mohammed
VI, who informed Benseddik that the nomination of Kettani to replace
him, was a result of the "weakness he demonstrated at the time
Wafabank was sold to the royal holding company
...
I regretfully inform you
that, I personally have decided to no longer bear allegiance to you
...
But as in
any conduit through which water flows, it rapidly threatened to engulf
everything
...
It should be noted, however, that the circumstances of the merger between the two banks, BCM and Wafa, was the object of divergent
points of view
...
lakome
...
78
they initiated the whole affair from their position within the royal holding company Siger, and that Khalid Oudghiri was kept on the sidelines
...
" According to Oudghiri, installed in an office just steps
away from the Arc of Triumph in Paris, Majidi and Bouhemou did a total re-write of history
...
They let me go ahead, skeptical, telling me that Kettani, with whom I was discussing things, ‘would
sell me down the river
...
I created a veritable
dynamic of growth at the international level
...
"!
Oudghiri's success pleased only a few people
...
Word got around that the
new entity, growing out of the merger, was called Attijarwafabank
...
!
Any attempts to look too closely into the details of this merger and
its consequences were forbidden
...
" The only problem was that Aboudrar's remarks
had no impact
...
This was the same case for
the competing Council, responsible for making judgements about
79
The Predator-King
...
!
!
Attijariwafabank became, by far, the most profitable of all the
branches of the ONA
...
Similarly, Khalid Oudghiri
grew increasingly confident and made his first unwise move, if one
gauges it according to the codes operative at the Court
...
Well connected among the heads of the French corporate world, he made it
known that they did not understand what was happening and were
concerned
...
!
!
To cause a man's downfall, to crush him by discrediting him, means
precise and detailed work requiring time and patience
...
Bouhemou often dictated what Majidi
should whisper into the king's ear
...
The banker
who had, so it is said, double nationality and maintained good relations with Paris, was the ideal "man for the French," the spearhead
that French capitalism dreamed of…who could ask for anything
more?!
The epithet is slanderous but the king's reaction lacked clarity
...
!
Mounir Majidi was used to this game, even if, at least on two occasions, the king's anger degenerated into physical violence directed
against him
...
The king's exasperation, and the insults that echoed through the halls
80
of the palace, alternated with periods of good will on his part
...
" This seemed to be the
supreme virtue in the eyes of the 23rd sovereign of the Alawite dynasty
...
They had explained to Mohammed VI, only shortly
beforehand, that the financial health of the bank at this point allowed
for a change in directorship without risk to its stability
...
Oudghiri confided: "I
wasn't fooled, but I answered him: 'Very well
...
' The next day, I presented the outline of the
successful merger, the international development plan, and the one
granting France a full banking license
...
'"!
In point of fact, Oudghiri knows that the creation of a new position
required modifying the bank's statutory laws, which necessitated calling a general assembly
...
"But," he went on to detail,"I knew that it was the end
...
" He knew that it was over for
him but, on the surface of things, Majidi, Bouhemou and he himself
maintained the same discourse about the need for creating "national
champions" in the economic and financial sector, that would be
adapted to world-wide competition
...
Oudghiri envisaged a complex reorganization which, while favoring the emergence of centers of economic growth, would go along
81
The Predator-King
...
As for Majidi, on the other hand, defending the idea
of national champions was a slogan that would allow them to hide
from the public the fact that the king was taking over control of the
country’s economic and financial sectors
...
He hands over to the sovereign's personal secretary a detailed
study concerning the mechanisms by which the king and his family
could disengage themselves from the Moroccan economy
...
"Reading it over," he recalls, "Majidi literally became livid
...
"!
!
For Majidi and Bouhemou, Attijariwafabank was not only a source
for profit-making, but also an instrument of considerable power
...
Along these lines, all that was needed was to refuse or cut a
line of credit in order to enact a life or death blow to businesses -- or
even individuals
...
On the other hand,
the courtesans and beneficiaries of the king's good will, would reap
unjustified lines of credit
...
But implementing this strategy meant he had to get rid of Oudghiri
...
The businesses belonging to the royal
holding companies flourished in an almost perfect quasi-monopoly,
without being subjected to the slightest competition
...
Overall, the king's power in the economic and financial realm moved ahead to assume equally absolute
power in the political domain
...
It was exactly like the countless rights and privileges which
were attached to his position as king and which were as extensive as
his obligations were vague and unspecified
...
In May 2007, he is dismissed
from the presidency of the bank
...
"We are no longer getting
along, so let's call it quits," Majidi supposedly said
...
This was most likely done in just such a way so as to keep
the transaction under wraps in Morocco
...
Working for the king meant that you
took the risk of being thrown out at a moment's notice, but you would
never be fired and given monetary compensation
...
Your friends
would distance themselves, your family would be singled out, your
authority and prestige would vanish
...
And after having waited
83
The Predator-King
...
But you would only get vague promises from
them, and the tight-knit circle in the Palace, proximity to the king,
would forever remain inaccessible, a realization that caused those
who had been kept out to be inconsolable
...
The information went straight to the king, and he
had a violent fit of anger directed against a secretary who had so stupidly gone against all the prevailing rules
...
!
!
A King Who Is Close To His Money!
The king is tight with his money, and cannot abide that the smallest
amount be removed, however modest with regard to his expenditures
and the royal fortune, for the benefit of a man who had fallen into disgrace
...
!
To this first affront with regard to the monarch, a second will follow
in rapid succession
...
The Gulf
kingdom seems to taunt the kingdom of Morocco, implicitly hoping to
weaken its authority
...
The action comes to light four years after the alleged events
and two years after he had left Morocco
...
!
A very odd affair transpires, in which none of the protagonists will
play the role one would have wished them to play
...
This was astonishing speed for a case without proofs that had been filed four
days after the facts
...
He owned land in Marrakech, given as collateral, and the bank was already in the process
of auctioning it off
...
In exchange, he
committed to immediately pay $5,803,650 to the bank
...
The operation unfolded without a hitch
...
Maître Hajri signed a protocol with him at the end of which the attorney agreed to refund the 45 million dirhams requested, in exchange
for a delay in the auction
...
Moreover, the bank considered the case
closed in 2005
...
The plaintiff relied on the support of an influential attorney,
Mohamed Naciri, the Palace's own lawyer…named two years later
Minister of Justice
...
85
The Predator-King
...
!
After the complaint was filed, Abdelkrim Boufettaass phoned his notary, who was also his friend, Mohamed Hajiri, on vacation in Marbella: "It's pointless for you to come back," he said to him, "the dossier is
being taken care of by the Palace
...
Actually, Boufettass maintained that it was the notary who
withdrew the 13 million dirhams to hand them over to Oudghiri
...
All his dossiers had been confiscated by the police but, before the judge who takes his witness testimony, he will refute all Boufettass's allegations
...
Another witness will state to the courtroom that Boufettass had confided in him that "he was forced to file a claim and that this whole
thing did not come from him
...
As Boufettass confided, "the affaire [was being] taken care
of by the Palace”… And to carry this off, he made use of a zealous
servant in the person of the judge Jamal Serhane
...
The
Palace handed over to him the most delicate business, and his zeal
often led him to trade his judge's robes for those of a prosecutor
...
!
In November 2008, the notary and Oudghiri are questioned without
their being informed as to the reasons
...
Anyway, Khalid Oudghiri had never even gotten the slightest summons to a meeting
...
!
In a parallel manner, it was a real strategy of strangulation used
against the banker set up in Saudi Arabia
...
!
The governor of the Central Bank of Morocco calls his Saudian colleague to say to him: "You should put an end to this man's job, we
have devastating information on him
...
!
"Oh no, I merely wanted to send you a word of warning orally," wisely
replied the Moroccan in charge of the dossier
...
There, I was approached by a famous Moroccan
singer who hugged me and returned right away accompanied by the
uncle of Boufettass, my accuser, who said to me: "It is a very sad story indeed, my nephew was arrested, and it was then that he was
pressured into making accusations against you
...
87
The Predator-King
...
The
envelope came back to him, opened up, along with the note "refused
by the judge
...
He calls the personal
secretary of the Saudi king to let him know that Mohammed VI
wished Oudghiri to return immediately
...
Several weeks later, Majidi hits again with astounding remarks: My king," he says to him, "go call your king in order to get that
which he is requesting!"!
The pressure that is put on Oudghiri's employers is, from here on
in, too strong
...
Back in France, he hires Mohamed Teber as his lawyer, an old friend
of Ben Barka's during the days of the struggle
...
" Then he added: "They did
it on purpose, it's a political business, and a political deal is not argued, but rather it is negotiated
...
"The courtroom was supposed to open on Tuesday, and the previous Sunday my lawyer
called: "I want to see you in Paris on Tuesday
...
" He
arrived and announced to me: "You are going to be condemned to a
heavy prison sentence for complicity in corruption, as the Notary's
accomplice
...
" I was flabbergasted
...
The implication of the Palace in all this frightened him
...
88
from Majidi, who warned him: "If you defend Oudghiri, you are going
against His Majesty
...
The notary, sentenced to 10 years in prison, is
arrested right away for "forgery of public documents and fraud
...
The two
accused men are ordered to jointly pay 35 millions dirhams
...
By his side was Mohamed Nacirir, the king's attorney
and Justice Minister
...
The notary, in the argument behind this sentencing, had been
arbitrarily turned into a bureaucrat and Oudghiri viewed as his accomplice…All his possessions in Morocco would be seized and this
sentencing would be compounded by the Court of Appeals in February 2011
...
The object in mind was simple: transform his life
into a hell, and the man himself into a complete pariah
...
!
Someone who followed this case closely confided: "Reading Judge
Serhane's handling of the case, we realized that there was no proof,
nor witness against Khalid Oudghiri
...
The notary always denied
71 Ibid
...
Plundering Morocco
having bribed Oudghiri and no link could be established between the
two men
...
72!
The king's, of course, but just as all those men who claimed to
speak on his behalf
...
"!
!
!
!
VIII
...
They hope to see him disappear from the political and economic scene
...
!
The attack again Anas Serfioui, Moroccan real estate magnate and
CEO of the group Addoha, was not gratuitous
...
"We define individuals in this way," the agency
explained, "his fortune exceeds $1 billion and he never appeared on
an important international list of wealthy people
...
74% of the capital in
72 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, November 2011
...
!
The information exploded like a bomb is the Moroccan business milieu: Anas Sefrioui was the second wealthiest man in Morocco, after
king Mohammed VI! In the posh living rooms of Casablanca villas,
people feed off of this anecdote: In 2008, Anas Sefrioui took in more
dividends than the "king" or the "boss" as Morocco's "golden boys"
liked to call the sovereign
...
It was whispered that Anas Sefrioui,
however dull and insipid he was, was supposedly a protégé of the
Palace with whom certain members of the royal family had business
dealings
...
!
!
When "An Average Joe" Is A Billionaire !
The CEO finds it hard to put up with the media blitz surrounding him
-- in fact, it was he who liked to say over and over again that he was
only "aabdou rabih" (God's servant) and "an average Joe
...
Between a private jet and luxury sedans, the man
nonetheless was light-years away from the in-your-face flamboyance
of certain major Moroccan businessmen
...
Right down to his average physical appearance, tinctured with a simple good nature…
...
Only a certain stiffness in his bearing, underscored by a sober,
perfectly fitting suit-and-tie outfit, was a reminder that this average
Joe belong to the country's élite
...
91
The Predator-King
...
Coming
out of Fez's upper class, which for a long time had so dominated the
kingdom's economic and political scene, but which today has given
way to the economic élite of Casablanca, "Si'Anas" was fortunate to
have been well-born
...
!
The Sefrioui family were operating a volcanic-clay [ghassoul is a
natural product commonly used in Morocco as a shampoo and hair
conditioner] mine, that natural product which is manna for sensitive
skin, and which they exported to foreign countries
...
Later on, he will boast about the fact that he was a self-made
man
...
School was important but it was not where you learned the most essential thing: common sense, humility, and especially, respect whatever the cost in the way of promises," he declared in an interview
studded with clichés and well-meaning intentions, that he gave to the
weekly publication Jeune Afrique in 2006
...
I spent my time on the
road, between Casablanca, Agadir, and Fez, following through on our
mining business and our wrapping paper factories
...
In the 1980s, the future billionaire jumped into real estate ventures
...
He
began with a small enterprise created in 1988, baptized Douja Pro74 Leila Saïd, “Anas Sefrioui, monsieur dix mille logements par an,” Jeune Afrique, July 31, 2006
...
It was done with great discretion, because he
would need patience until 1994 in order to reap the first fruits of his
gamble
...
The Moroccan population was exploding and cities
were burdened under the weight of the rural exodus which was increasing the number of slums surrounding the urban centers
...
!
Anas Sefrioui was certainly on to something: low-income housing
was becoming a high priority from the beginning of Mohammed VI's
reign, who would turn it into one of the driving forces of the economy,
with a huge infrastructure to support it
...
"Low-income housing will constitute for Anas Sefrioui the beginnings
of his fortune
...
75 Low income and poor citizens are a source of unlimited
profits
...
A witness who follows the mysterious workings of power, recalls that Addoha's boss had connections to
the powerful Minister of the Interior, a man who handled the dirty
75 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, October 2011
...
Plundering Morocco
work, Driss Basri
...
In the greatest of secrecy, these men were stockholders
at Addoha, to the extent of 15%
...
In any event, Sefrioui is certain of one thing: following in the wake
of the king is a source of profit
...
These shares
were allegedly transferred to the Palace
...
!
!
It should be said that Anas Sefrioui was clever enough, in 2003, to
make his enterprise particularly appealing thanks to what is called
"single-stop shopping
...
Addoha enters into a boom period in
which its offer meets the immense appetite of Moroccans for new
housing
...
In 2005, our profits approached
$77,382,000 and our capital exceeded $193,455,000
...
Several weeks later, the
head executives of the group will tacitly admit that it was under pressure from the royal entourage that Addoha made a public offering of
its capital
...
Financial projections were in excellent
shape, and the the introduction on the stock market was a success
...
"In the end, the public offer of
sale will be oversubscribed by 18 times its worth
...
!
Sefrioui can indeed rub his hands together: he just pocketed a
small fortune of 2
...
To keep things in perspective, Mr
and Mrs John Doe also profited modestly as a result of this operation
...
A colleague out and
out paid for the the advance on his house thanks to Addoha
...
95
The Predator-King
...
!
In the months that followed this initial offering on the Stock Market,
people found out that Addoha had made other people happy, who, in
the shadows, filled their pockets with no restraint or shame
...
A genuine hold-up that bankers, financial analysts, and traders qualified unanimously as the greatest insider trading ever orchestrated in
the kingdom of Morocco
...
To be precise, in three stages that
went from July 6 to November 10, 2006, when the already too high a
level became "a concern" and "unjustifiable
...
78 The second stage shows the initial excitement of
the market
...
The sheep-like behavior of the investors
and minor stockholders was such that the share rapidly rose to that
evaluation to such an extent as to rise again when a second research
note from the same group at Attijariwafa raised the value to 1400
dirhams
...
!
From then on -- the stock's value of 1490 dirhams at that point -the Addoha group stopped all official communication, notably about
77 Souhaïl Nhaïli, “Action Addoha: le niveau du cours alarme les analystes,” La Vie éco, No-
vember 10, 2006
...
96
the purchase of land, as this information always makes it possible to
predict the valuation of a particular group
...
It is characterized by a continuous increase in Addoha stock, between rumors and speculation
...
!
!
On November 11, 2006, in fact, Anas Sefrioui signs with the government and in the presence of the king, an important capital expenditure agreement of 11 billion dirhams
...
If the monarch refrains from signing
this agreement himself, he nonetheless leaves all the details to government members or high ranked bureaucrats -- his presence alone
is sufficient to show how important he considers it
...
The first
project, of 131 acres, related to the land on which the Témara zoo is
built, near Rabat, the only zoo in Morocco, pledged to a future group
of luxury apartments and villas
...
65 billion dirhams on the part of Addoha
...
80!
For many, the explosive rise of Addoha's worth and the massive
purchase of stock could be explained only by the fact that no one was
truly aware that the king was going to give priority to the group by
79 Ibid
...
97
The Predator-King
...
The value of a real estate promotion business is
dependent on the cash to which it has access, and from then on, it is
understood that it was all a foregone conclusion
...
In
order to sow the seeds of discontent and add to the general confusion, Fouad Ali El Himma, the king's friend and appointed Minister of
the Interior, implies (mistakenly) that the monarch's own brother,
Moulay Rachid, was behind this affair…a tactic to distract those who
might accuse Mohammed VI?!
!
"I Don't Have Any Information"!
No formal proof exists against the sovereign, and not surprisingly
either, the identity of the new principal shareholders in the group is
never made public
...
81!
Interrogated by a Moroccan daily knows for his close relations with
the authorities,82 several days after signing the agreement in the
presence of Mohammed VI, the Managing Director of the Addoha
group, Noureddine El-Ayoubi, shifts the givens to evade embarrassing questions: "There was, indeed, many unfounded rumors about
the arrival of new investors among us […] We do not have financial
difficulties, it is rather the contrary
...
"!
Not very convincing
...
"I do not
have any information about it," admits Assia Warrak, the director of
communication for the Casablanca stock market
...
82 Ibid
...
But the Ethics Board for real estate values (CDVM),
policing the stock market, chose to avert its glance
...
"We are definitely not a firm that has been given priority
...
Moreover, how could it be conceivable that this is the case and give information to another person
who would make money off of us?”83 he explained to the Moroccan
press in 2006
...
"Everything that belongs to the State must be sold through a bidding process," he points
out
...
A real thorn
in the side of Moroccan management, everything in him is the opposite of his constant rival, Anas Sefrioui
...
Anas came from an upper-class family
...
The two men only had one thing in common:
they were self-made men
...
Anas Sefrioui was friendly with
Driss Basri, the ex-grand vizier to Hassan II, Miloud Chaabi's rela83 Op
...
84 Hassan Hamdani and Fahd Iraqi, “Miloud Chaabi
...
297, November 10 - 16, 2007
...
Plundering Morocco
tions with the monarchy were strained…although not so tense as to
ever cross the red line
...
Nonetheless, at the end of 2006, he prepared the groundwork for the Témara zoo scandal to be made public,
a scandal in which the Addoha group had been implicated in November 2006, as a result of the famous investment agreement
...
There's a high voltage line
that has to be put underground, which raises the price per square
meter to more than 1000 dirhams
...
!
When Miloud Chaabi threatened to make a purchase offer for this
plot at the going market rate, in order to counter Addoha, he was
pointedly ignored by the authorities
...
"The State has committed to building a new zoological
park of 123 acres, following the highest international standards
...
86
In 2010, under pressure of public opinion which was still waiting for its
new zoo, Anas Sefrioui spent 420 million dirhams to construct an establishment that will cost the State 800 million…The zoo was finally
inaugurated in January 2012
...
86 Aujourd’hui Le Maroc, op
...
100
For certain astute observers of the throne, the introduction of Addoha on the Moroccan stock market, beyond the huge insider trading
which accompanied it, marked a major turning point in the system of
predation put into place by the king and his entourage
...
"The real insider trading," he declared, "does not consist only of
holding back information ahead of time concerning the stock market
...
They
understood, with Addoha, that they could more easily and quickly get
rich through the financial markets than relying on the actual economy
...
"87 Who profited from the operation? The question makes more than one person smile: "There are
those who work alongside the king and who, basically, are witness to
the prevailing trends of our time, an era oriented towards speculation,
unfettered accumulation of wealth, and the financialization of the
economy
...
A true revelation
...
!
!
!
The State Subsidizes His Majesty's Enterprises!
!
Discretion is not the primary virtue of the king's men
...
Those are directed by technocrats, mainly technicians or engineers trained and formed in the
French mold but returning to serve His Majesty
...
101
The Predator-King
...
The ONA holding company
is the at the head of the list involved in these practices
...
It was
the case with the Central Dairy, whose market share was 62% of all
dairy products, with Lesieur Cristal in oils, with Bimo, number one is
the manufacture of crackers and cookies, and with the mass distribution chains, Marjane and Acima
...
!
But let's give Caesar what Caesar is due
...
!
History is witness to the fact that it was Hassan II who gave birth to
the royal octopus that would become the ONA
...
Thus it was, in the 1990s, that he turned over the reins of his
agricultural enterprises -- the celebrated royal Domains -- to his sonin-law, Khalid Benharbit, who had just married his daughter, the
princess Lalla Hasna
...
He ran the
Domaines without any skill for it (but not without arrogance) for nearly
a decade
...
This was not
at all the case with Mohammed VI
...
And any competitors who dared to challenge him on economic front
had better watch out
...
!
!
Another war, this time a kind of fratricide, was stirring things up in
the inner sanctum between 2006 and 2007
...
One of the episodes of this battle unfolded in 2006 with France as the
backdrop
...
Bad figuring: Mounir Majidi was a the helm then in order
to undo those alliances formed under Hassan II by certain subsidiaries of the ONA with a few French firms
...
Sensing a chance to strike a blow
against his rival Majidi, El Himma allegedly unleashed a full police inquiry, accompanied by the head of Moroccan espionage services,
Yassine Mansouri, against the king's private secretary
...
!
!
A Very Profitable Compensation Fund!
Mohammed VI, like Hassan II, did not hesitate to implement the
power of the State to better serve his personal interests, all the while
claiming to be the "king of poor people" to his subjects as well as to
88 Fédoua Tounassi, “Querelles de basse-cour,” Le Journal hebdomadaire, no
...
103
The Predator-King
...
He continues, in particular, to misappropriate public monies on a large scale -- and legally -- as is shown by
the case of subsidies intended to guarantee Moroccans access to the
basic necessities of daily life (gasoline, butane for cooking, sugar,
and oil)
...
With the rise in prices for raw materials and the growth of the
population, the sums dispersed by the Fund grew right before one's
eyes: 20 billion dirhams in 2007, more than 36 billion in 2008, 45 billion in 2011
...
And then Mohammed VI knew perfectly
well that each increase in the amount of subsidies…would cause the
profits of his businesses to grow even greater
...
For example, according to Najib Akesbi, economist and reputable
professor at the Hassan II Agronomic and Veterinary institute in Rabat, "the State could distribute a sum to the poor, a kind of minimum
monthly revenue (RMI)
...
When it is known that a household includes, on average, about five
people, one million households are directly implicated in this
...
Far less than the current 45 billion
...
Incidentally, that is what we call the cost
of non-reform in the compensation Fund
...
104
Alas, we fear that these financial considerations are light-years
away from the concerns of His Majesty and his entourage
...
There is an anecdote about this
...
Discovering the startling news that the housekeeper was traveling in economy,
the courtesan's wife gets it into her head to correct this mistake
...
But despite
threats, RAM refused to provide this preferential treatment
...
It was then
that the permanent consul general of Morocco in Paris, Abderrazak
Jaidi, called RAM
...
90!
If history's last word fails to say in which class the El Himma family
housekeeper traveled, finally, the fact remains that such resistance is
exceptional
...
!
In 2005, it announced that it had "ceded to Cosumar all government
interests in the four sugar companies for a total sum of 1,367 billion
dirhams
...
" In contrast, the Minister made sure not to emphasize
90 “Une grande mission de l’ambassade du Maroc à Paris,” www
...
info, August 11, 2006
...
105
The Predator-King
...
Since 1996, the State fixed the public subsidy
at 2000 dirhams a ton for refined sugar, guaranteeing in this way to
even the most humble households that they would be able to continue to sweeten their mint tea
...
In other
words, exclusively to Cosumar, depending on what the enterprise declared
...
"From the minute that Cosumar
holds the monopoly on the sugar market -- production, transformation, and distribution -- it is automatically this very enterprise that
shares with the State in the management of the Compensation Fund
for that segment devoted to sugar
...
93 It is an easy step then to
imagine that there might be abuses…!
92 Najib Akesbi, Driss Benatya and Nourredine El-Aoufi, L’Agriculture marocaine à l’épreuve de la
libéralisation, Rabat, Économie critique, 2008
...
106
!
!
The ONA Decides Duty Rates on Imported Milk!
The case of the Central dairy industry, held equally by the French
group Danone and the ONA, is also revealing of how little the king is
concerned with the proper functioning of the State budget
...
94!
But the price for powdered milk increases dramatically in price on
the world market
...
It was an annoying situation for the Moroccan producers of
yoghurt
...
!
The affair gets off on the wrong track for the government: 12,000
tons of powdered milk imported each year back then brought in 110
million dirhams, which fattened the State budget of course but also
went into the special fund for agricultural development
...
But
the Central dairy did not care, preferring to hold onto its margin of
profit
...
It was
unthinkable
...
With the stroke of a magic wand (malevolent would
94 Fahd Iraqi, “Lait: ça va bouillir!”, TelQuel, no
...
95 Ibid
...
Plundering Morocco
be more appropriate), the duties dropped from 60% to 35% for powdered milk, and from 102% to…2,5% for UHT (long conservation)
milk
...
96!
!
Private companies suspected of wanting to overshadow royal enterprises are yet worse treated than the Minister of Finance
...
Its crime?
To have successfully competed against products from the Lesieur
company, owned by the ONA until 2011
...
!
A year later, in 2005, Savola's profits exceeding all expectations of
its owners thanks to the success of the oil Afia, at the same time as
the subsidiary of ONA acknowledged its own loss of 10% of the market
...
Thus, there
was no doubt that Lesieur brought a claim before the Competition
Council for unfair practices in 2007
...
This was a hard
blow, of course, but the fatal blow would be made by the ONA directly: the hyper-markets and supermarkets Marjane and Acima, both of
them properties of the royal holding company, ceased stocking their
stores with Savola oil overnight
...
108
The ONA put out an iron-clad argument to dissuade independent
distributers (grocery stores, etc
...
!
In spite of resistance from the Saudis -- who filed multiple law suits,
lobbied, launched press campaigns -- there was nothing that could be
done and the Savola products gradually disappeared from the
shelves
...
At the ONA, revenge is a dish best served
cold
...
Advisors Are Beaten !
The counter-attack against Savola was disproportionate
...
!
The subject is taboo, but it is said that veritable human psychodramas take place in them
...
He kicks and punches people without the slightest hesitation when he can't get hold of the first object that he sees
...
"The close circle around the king were victims of
his fury
...
97
But in 2006, only foreign newspapers openly covered one of these
royal fits of rage
...
Mounir Majidi was going through a long exposé when, without
97 Taïeb Chadi and Hicham Houdaïfa, “Les colères du roi,” Le Journal hebdomadaire, no
...
109
The Predator-King
...
98!
Several weeks later, it was the advisor Mohamed Moatissim's turn
to be subjected to the royal rage which threatened, this time around
to end very badly if we are to believe the Spanish daily El Mundo in
its July 18, 2006 edition
...
It is
learned in El Mundo that Moatissim, having been deeply humiliated,
tried to commit suicide by swallowing pills and jumping into his pool
where his gardener is said to have saved him in extremes
...
!
!
These excesses come from a monarch who, just like his father before him, knows that he has to answer to no one
...
!
This was a most-favored treatment which the members of the agricultural cooperative Copag was not privileged to receive
...
!
98 Nicolas Beau and Catherine Graciet, op
...
110
Created in 1993, this cooperative, which at its beginning only had
21 agricultural workers as opposed to the 12,500 today, became successful very quickly thanks to its fine abilities for innovation and its
sense of marketing
...
All of a sudden,
Jaouda became a threat to the absolute leadership of the Central
dairy…!
In 2004, exasperation had reached its height at the ONA, and the
Palace undertook an attack with that authoritarianism and sense of
implementation of public powers that characterizes the Alawite
monarchy
...
In the crosshairs of the authorities were exemptions
granted in the way of TVA (valued added taxes) and business taxes
...
It was as much as saying
that this load was specifically targeting Copag, which more than met
this requirement
...
But how much weight
do the members of this agricultural cooperative exert when confronted with the foremost farmer of the kingdom, Mohammed VI? A situation that could not be more comfortable, which the sovereign inherited
from Hassan II, who himself had inherited it from his father, Mohammed V
...
Everything is registered on the ledgers, I inherited all of it from my
father, I bought properties, I distributed salaries, I participated in the
export of our agricultural products, I have experimental farms on
which I spend my own monies
...
Plundering Morocco
The Royal Domains: "Everything Is Confidential
...
And it is just about the only thing that is officially known about this
mysterious enterprise
...
We
learned, notably, that the royal Domains made "revenues estimated at
$150 million, of which two thirds in exports, particularly in citrus
...
"!
But the mystery remained total as to the acreage of lands belonging
to His Majesty's Domains
...
But here's the thing: the Domains officially acknowledged
only a "little" park of…29,652 acres -- a figure that makes the agricultural experts of the country smile
...
!
!
99 Fédoua Tounassi, “Les jardins du roi,” TelQuel, no
...
112
As surprising as it may seem for a monarch with such a high level
of economic activity, Mohammed VI will have taken five years after
his assuming power in order to discover the immense profits that he
could make from his lands
...
"!
More than an "upgrading of the country" it was, first and foremost,
an upgrading of his agricultural Domains that the monarch was
putting into place
...
"All important decisions of the group are taken or must be approved by the
king's general secretary
...
Each operation is overseen by a director who reports to the CEO, who in turn reports to Majidi," the magazine TelQuel reports in 2008
...
Not as much
could be said, unfortunately, for the Moroccan countryside, where the
standard of living of the farmers will take off considerably less quickly
than the revenues of the Domains…
...
After a period of respite between 2005 - 2006 which, without a doubt, was
marked by a reduction in the number of security forces within the
Palace, the free and independent press (which barely was surviving
financially) would be muzzled in an unmitigated way
...
On January 15, the pub113
The Predator-King
...
This weekly,
written in the Moroccan dialect (darija), was, in addition, sentenced to
suspend publication for two years
...
"!
Three days later, the owner of the Journal hebdomadaire, Aboubakr
Jamaï, is forced to quit in order to save the publication: along with the
journalist Fahd Iraqi, he was accused of a smear campaign and had
to pay an obscure Belgian research center the astronomical sum of 3
million dirhams
...
"100!
Unable to cover the cost of this fine, Jamaï preferred to give it all up
in order to avoid having bailiffs come to lock the doors of the newspaper which thus would be assured of another two years reprieve
...
!
Planned and set up by Fouad Ali El Himma, this campaign of muzzling the media allowed the Palace to deflect attention from His
Majesty's business affairs
...
Whatever the case, the king's enterprises
were becoming less financially productive
...
114
getting involved in sectors with high future potential by pretending to
fight corruption
...
The King's Whims!
!
In Morocco, the king sets an example
...
One of an unstoppable and limitless increase of his own wealth to the
detriment of the country -- and one which threatened to destabilize
the monarchy itself
...
A system put into place by Hassan II,
which enumerates the exorbitant privileges enjoyed by the sovereign,
but which is far less obvious with regarding his duties to his people
...
Hassan II admitted, by
implication: "Cases have been seen," he said, "where the ties of allegiance were rejected by the population which considered that the king
had not sufficiently defended the faith or the rights of his citizens, or
that he had abandoned parts of the territory
...
No institution had
the right to determine whether or not the sovereign failed in his mission, and procedures for his removal from power were nonexistent
...
And his
successor understood perfectly that maintaining this vow of allegiance guaranteed him impunity
...
For a handful of ambitious cynics, the fastest
track towards wealth and privilege is one that revolves around the
101 Interview with one of the authors, Rabat, 1993
...
Plundering Morocco
royal orbit, but for the vast majority -- with one Moroccan out of two
unemployed -- the excesses of the Palace and its Court give rise to
anger and frustration
...
But the scale
of these abuses undermines it and may even hasten its end
...
"Good governance," declared the sovereign on
that day, "can not be solely limited to the judicial-institutional realm or
to the political sphere, since it equally and out of necessity spreads
into the economic arena […] Global moralization constitutes, in Our
eyes, one of the undeniable imperative for the consolidation of the
rule of law in the domain of business
...
" An odd speech
since, basically, every one of his words contradicts his actions
...
While French diplomats stationed throughout the kingdom turn a blind
eye and impose a self-censorship, their American counterparts warn
Washington
...
This document devotes a great deal of space to royal
corruption in the real estate sector
...
"!
It then adds that "the principal institutions and procedures of the
Moroccan government are used by the Palace in order to exert pressure and solicit bribes in the real estate sector
...
Holding a discussion with anyone else was a waste of time
...
"!
The diplomatic telegram also evoked the influence and commercial
interest of the king and some of his advisors in practically every real
estate project of importance
...
"This phenomenon seriously
undermines the good governance that the Moroccan government is
trying to promote," he determines
...
"While corrupt
practices existed during Hassan II's reign, they became much more
institutionalized under Mohammed VI
...
This is
probably because Moroccan public opinion is well aware of the profit
margins often exceeding 30% obtained in this industry, a guarantee
of colossal profits for both the speculators and the Palace insiders
around whom they gravitate
...
Plundering Morocco
earliest stages, attractive prospects for returns
...
"102!
That CDG, controlled by the king, actually has a real estate subsidiary, the CGI (Compagnie générale immobilière), which introduced
20% of its capital onto the stock market in 2007 The offering period
went from July 23 to 27
...
In Morocco, as we have seen,
insider trading is not always viewed as a crime that warrants sentencing, but rather as a kind of privilege that once again comes along with
proximity to the king
...
This is where abuse is seen in its most
rudimentary form: those who have the power know it and are in a situation that allows them to buy these shares first, thereby realizing an
immediate net capital gain
...
The share price will
increase five-fold in less than two months
...
This operation, like any phenomenon of endemic corruption that
tends to broaden, will have also opened the door for the communication of privileged information to some close friends that needed to be
102 Interview with one of the authors, Rabat, September 2011
...
!
A financial establishment that thinks itself immune to punishment
demonstrated a heightened appetite in this affair
...
!
This citizen of the United Arab Emirates, completely unknown by
everyone, would actually be, according to well-informed sources, the
nominee and holder of trust units for a member of the royal family
...
104 The latter was committed to
resell stocks with capital gains that were fixed in advance
...
!
Upline was nonetheless sentenced to a fine of 10 million dirhams,
which apparently provoked the anger of this relative of the king
...
Indeed, a royal exit door was opened
to him with the buy-back of Upline by a public bank, the Banque Centrale Populaire (BCP)
...
104 Samir Achehbar, “BCP-Upline
...
339, September 20 - 26, 2008
...
Plundering Morocco
er from the Emirates, possibly the one standing in for the king's relative
...
It particularly insists on corruption and lack of transparence, as well as on the numerous deficiencies in the judicial system
...
!
!
A Secretive Royal Fortune!
The relations between the king, his brother, and his sisters are not
actually peaceful
...
A likable and attentive brother,
the crown prince became a touchy king, not predisposed to cope
even with his family
...
His
claim for a complete control over the economy is derived from this
logic
...
In a system where everything connected to the reigning family is very
carefully hidden, this was the most highly guarded secret: 12 years
after his death, the inheritance from Hassan II is supposed to have
been partially usurped by Mohammed VI
...
The
king is believed to have kept the balance of the inheritance, that is to
say, an amount that was surely monumental
...
120
turbing and revealing, illustrates once again the astounding relationship that the man has with money but also…with his dead father
...
Thus, one fine day on a beach in the
north of the country, when he meets prince Moulay Hicham, to whom
he has not spoken in 10 years, he gives him the finger
...
The man in charge of the Central Bank explained that it was due to the financial strains, relative of
course, encounteed by the princess
...
He collects luxury sedans but also paintings
...
The man responsible for the acquisitions was Hassan Mansouri
...
Placed at the head of Primarios,
the royal society that furnishes and decorates the royal palaces while
billing the purchases to the Moroccan State, he manages to satisfy,
discretely, the tastes of his sovereign
...
His canvases,
done in a naïve style often depict, as we know, daily life in small Jewish communities of Russia, where he was born at the end of the 19th
century
...
!
The private fortune of the king is surrounded with such secrecy that
all kinds of speculation is possible
...
In January 2000, right
after the arrival of Mohammed VI to the throne, Cheikh Yassine, the
121
The Predator-King
...
" The sovereign prohibited
the publication of the letter written by the old islamist leader
...
" In any event, he was not lacking for courtesans surrounding
him
...
!
The first is composed of old school buddies from the Royal College,
transformed, as we have seen, into his closest collaborators and his
fellow party-goers as well
...
They carry out his orders, satisfy his smallest whims,
wipe away his tantrums and the insults against him
...
Tyrannized by the
king, they have become, in turn, the tyrants of those who answer to
them
...
Several of his cousins and other individuals
whose unexpected backgrounds are among them
...
The man established, in Morocco, a textile association that today exports 70% of
its production to Europe and 30% to the U
...
This miner's son, who
grew up in Bethune, now is the director of 8000 employees
...
Few know that he is a close friend of the king's, and the
rare number of people who are aware of it, do not know the reasons
behind it
...
During the summer, the king likes to spend time in the north, near Tétouan, where the schooner with antique sails that he purchased for
himself is berthed
...
" He was probably
wrong to boast of this, the king is supposed to have found out, and he
would fall into disgrace from then on
...
He was indirectly familiar with the Palace, behind the
scenes
...
This discreet businessman acquired the reputation of a rising star
who destroyed everything in his path
...
!
The latest operation: Monégasque Maroc, a canning subsidiary belonging 100% to the ONA
...
Another privilege bestowed
upon Saïd Alj: granting him numerous plots of land at prices that were
unbeatable
...
!
!
Proximity to the monarch is obviously the source of advantages for
those who benefit directly, privileged men adrift in a sea of gloom
...
Plundering Morocco
businessman thus describes the corporate community crouching low,
cut to the core, placing their capital elsewhere, buying apartments in
Paris -- and seeking French, Canadian, or American passports
...
"106!
The entrepreneur Saïd Alj, a movie fanatic, set up film studios in
Ouarzazate, which won him the honor of being decorated by the king
in 2005
...
One of the guests presented a comical
tableau of this meeting between the French rocker and the king of
Morocco: "In the middle of the dinner, Johnny turned to the king and
said: 'It's a lot of fun, this dinner party, what a shame to have to call
you Your Majesty!'"107 Always relying on proper etiquette, Mohammed
VI is said to have replied: "Even my family must call me Your Majesty,
but you, Johnny, you can just use the familiar "tu" form with me
...
And an
evening spent with Johnny Hallyday, or in the company of such and
such a star, is infinitely more pleasant than spending it in a one-onone session with Jacques Chirac
...
First psychological
mistake
...
107 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, 2009
...
Yet Chirac showed an admirable patience and deference with regard to the monarch's errors
and excesses, at the same time as French businesses installed in
Morocco were poorly treated
...
!
An anecdote illustrates this in an astonishing way, and bears witness to the second psychological error made by Chirac
...
It is Michel Camdessus, the ex-Director of the International Monetary Fund
...
Chirac immediately contacted
Camdessus, who was dispatched to Tangiers where the king was
staying
...
he clearly had been
informed of it, but he simply had decided to ignore it, as if it did not
exist
...
!
!
Crisis in Marrakech!
Keeping the French under control established for the king and his
circle the beginning of a new era, that could be summed up by the
formula: "Out of sight, we'll get along well
...
Such was the case
with Primarios, that company belonging to the king which decorated
and furnished the palaces
...
Plundering Morocco
nected to acquisition of royal art work, it sued the magazine
Economie et Entreprises which had implied that Primarios had over
billed the renovation of the furnishings in the Mamounia, the palace in
Marrakech
...
The list of French celebrities,
politicians and journalists of all kinds, who stayed in this luxury hotel
at the invitation of the Palace is so long that there's no end to itemizing it
...
Whatever the case may be, Hassan II and Mohammed
VI have always watched very closely the proper management of the
establishment, including its interior decoration
...
It was as if to say that the questioning of
Primarios in the press had elicited the king's anger
...
9 million dirhams in awards for damages imposed on the magazine
...
!
!
Several things remain to be said with regard to Marrakech
...
In addition to the unfortunate affair concerning the
Mamounia, the Royal Mansour, which belongs to him, was recently
swept by a wave of panic
...
A dream setting inaccessible to 99% of
the world's population
...
!
The luxury hotel receives the reigning families of the Gulf region,
notably Saudi Arabia and the Emirates
...
Up until the day that scandal brooke
out and, worse yet, was repeated
...
Yes, a thief was
lurking in the Royal Mansour and went so far as to repeat his crime
...
For several weeks, the 500 employees
of the hotel were interrogated, their testimonies and schedules crosschecked
...
The scandal was squelched but more than two months passed before
the allegedly guilty party was discovered, at least that is what the
Palace claims, covertly, for the hotel Royal Mansour itself said nothing about it
...
In the absence of details about his
identity, the thief who taunted the king remains most enigmatic as to
motives…!
!
When The King's Mass-Distribution Stores Violate The Law!
The mass distribution industry, as we've seen, is within the fold of
the ONA
...
It is thus
an economically profitable area and, moreover, under-regulated, a
fact which does not go unnoticed by the Palace
...
Plundering Morocco
ahead of their competitor Label'Vie, whose market share does not
exceed 28%
...
By breaking with
Auchan in August 2007, the ONA had announced its intention to open
a new Acima supermarket every month and one Marjane hypermarket every quarter
...
108 As a result of a series of land
grants ceded by the State under highly advantageous conditions,
some gossips would call them lands stolen from the State, the group
experiences a growth that would also take some liberties with the
principles of Islam
...
Carrefour was
thus exiled to Salé, a lower-income suburb of Rabat
...
The ties between the two heads of State, close and friendly, go back to the reign
of Hassan II
...
Money from oil, multiple properties that he had acquired
throughout the world did not prevent the African leader from being literally fascinated by the royal positioning of Hassan II, the luxury and
ceremonial pageantry in which the Moroccan sovereign moved
...
128
frequently vacationed in the kingdom in order to meet the king who,
on the other hand, seemed to treat him like a provincial cousin
...
!
!
The Royal Gold Mines Bleed The People Dry!
In May 2010, two months after the king's visit, a convention was
signed by the Gabon government with Managem, the Moroccan mining group, authorizing this group to mine the gold in the Bakoudou
fields
...
The Bakoudou mine holds reserves
of a 1,700,000 tons of gold and its extraction, that began in July 2011,
generated an annual product of 500,000 tons of ore
...
"!
Yet for more than 40 years, the economic "emergence" of poor
Gabon, plundered by its leaders, has been severely compromised; on
the other hand, Morocco has one project after another taking place
there
...
!
To fully understand the current boom of Managem, one must look to
the heart of its original work which was, for decades, the exploitation
of mines in Morocco and the stockpiling of their yield by the royal ruling power
...
!
The most important mine in Morocco exploited by Managem is the
one in Akka
...
Plundering Morocco
1996
...
Here is why
...
!
Unofficially, the reality is far more somber
...
Managem, in order
to do this, activated numerous wells, each more than 1000 yards
deep, thus considerably reducing the available water table
...
In the overall indifference, the residents protested regularly in front of Managem's offices, demanding drinking water, protection of their commercial flocks,
and their oasis
...
!
Formerly, most of these mines belonged to the SMI, the public
company that was privatized in 1996
...
At the Imiter site, near Thingir, this outrageous over-exploitation provoked demonstrations in 2011
...
This water which was literally taken
away from the residents of the region
...
!
!
"Call Bouygues Immediately!"!
In Morocco, land is the symbol of power
...
He is the one who takes them over,
confiscates them, but also hands them out to reward or recognize evidence of loyalty
...
exprimetoi
...
!
In 2008, a lawsuit sets CDG Development, a subsidiary of the CDG
(Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion) against a wealthy family from the
north of the country, the Erzini
...
They denounced the abuse of power, which hindered the registration of their land and allowed for the expropriation
...
This was to be a luxury
grouping set to open at the end of 2013 and which boasts a golf
course designed by the ex-champion Jack Nicklaus
...
It is partially financed
by public funds, while at the same time the former owners, whose
land was seized, would never have been compensated
...
!
!
Hassan II's love of real estate, but especially his son's shared fondness for it, and the BTP, has led some régime critics to venture onto
shifting sands
...
During the course of our investigation, we
looks for plausible evidence of this investment
...
The king of
Morocco was never a shareholder in this French construction company, but it is true that as a privileged client he could count on the postsale service of those running the BTP
...
It was at the end of the 1990s
...
Plundering Morocco
rounded by several stiff-looking and deferential advisors
...
"!
"For how long?"!
"About 15 or 20 minutes
...
!
An annoyed look
...
"!
"And the program lasts how long?"!
"An hour
...
"110!
!
Two weeks later, the program was slotted as a priority, despite hesitations by Anne Sinclair
...
!
!
!
!
XI
...
At 56 years old,
he went through Ponts et Chaussées as well as the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
...
S
...
Then he
110 This scene unfolded in 1993 in the presence of one of the authors (E
...
132
went into self-imposed exile in the U
...
, in Washington, where he
worked for the World Bank before being named general director of
the Office Chérifien des Phosphates in 2006
...
!
From the time he took over, the task proved to be a tricky one for
Mustapha Terrab: under Hassan II, the OCP had generously been
used as the régime's slush fund and, an element that didn't help matters, its reserves for internal retirement, that gave out pensions to
some 30,000 retirees, had been literally wiped out
...
Explosive circumstances, financially as well as
socially
...
A French
bank which, despite this, provided it with loans over several years,
never was able to gain access to its accounts
...
112!
Mustapha Terrab then orders a series of audits from different offices, at the head of which was the dreaded American firm, Kroll, specialized in internal economic investigations
...
They would be
associated with crimes such as fraud and forgery of records, ou even
issuing backdated commercial visas
...
Serious irregularities were noted, such as the
111 Tahar Abou El Farah, “L’OCP externalise sa caisse de retraite,” Aujourd’hui le Maroc,” July 23,
2007
...
113 Nicolas Beau and Catherine Graciet, op
...
133
The Predator-King
...
Someone
close to the king, very close, also was singled out
...
In reality, what he was actually saying was quite simply
that the monarchy was at great risk if the information was made public
...
But
all's well that ends well
...
!
!
Chakib Benmoussa, however, will not have that same luck
...
He does not become a leader in business, but rather a Minister
...
!
Highly regarded by his European peers, Chakib Benmoussa
straightens up his ministry
...
134
puppet as his predecessors had been, he begins resisting in 2009, on
the eve of communal elections
...
This time around, Mohammed VI thought he had found the remedy to counter the islamists: create out of nothing a political party, the
PAM (Parti Authenticité et Modernité) the control of which he gave
over to his faithful El Himma
...
In Morocco, this pre-electoral phenomenon is called "transitional migration
...
He will be
quickly dispatched on January 4, 2010, without having been offered
another job
...
At month's end it was difficult to make ends meet, all the more so since he was under the
equivalent of house-arrest
...
!
The punishment, which is always held up in Morocco as an example to others, will last for 13 long months, until February 21, 2011 precisely, the date at which Chakib Benmoussa will be named to the
head of the Economic and Social Council, a job which he still discreetly holds today
...
!
!
"The King Does Not Speak, The King Does Not Communicate
...
For the journalist Ali Anouzla, who ran, with great success, the news
135
The Predator-King
...
Everything concerning political affairs goes through Fouad Ali El Himma, and everything dealing with
the economy and business goes through Mounir Majidi
...
[To find out what has happened to Aliz Anouzla in retribution for his outspoken criticism of the King in Lakome’s online
publication, it is sufficient to Google Anouzla’s name and today’s
date
...
Between 2007 and
2011, this battle unfolded in various newspapers
...
Thus in May 2007, the daily Al-Ahdat al-Maghribia showed this
devastating headline on its first page: "New financial scandal, the
king's private secretary was given land in Taroudannt at a negligible
cost
...
In
other words, 80 times less than the going market price according to
the newspaper, which determined it should have been in excess of
4000 dirhams the square meter
...
A year earlier, the consulting firm he
owned, Mena Media Consulting, had won an important contract with
the ONE (Office National d'Electricité)
...
The problem was that no call for bids had been arranged
...
136
The head of the paper Al Massae will have to pay dearly for his
damaging remarks
...
He officially was
accused of "disinformation" following an article that referred to the
head of the internal Moroccan secret service operation
...
!
!
All Power Resides in Locking up Three Spheres of Operation!
Although they politely despised each other, the two friends of the
king were obliged to work harmoniously in order to position their own
men in the key operations of administration and business
...
Their fate was tied to the king's prosperity
...
My country for an official
car…!
If tomorrow a revolution were to sweep away the régime as it did in
Tunisia, the purging that follows would decimate the senior ranks of
the Moroccan bureaucracy, in which certain are pressed more into
service by the Palace than others
...
"116
This well-known individual who also would like to remain anonymous,
enumerate the three key sectors in question: "The internal revenue
service that shows who is paying what and to impose penalties and
controls; the directorate of pardons, to know which trials to avoid and
116 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, December 2011
...
Plundering Morocco
which have to be initiated; the directorate of land registry, to know
what can be plundered and what cannot be
...
The two men reigned over a vast network of bureaucrats, intermediaries, and heads of industry
...
Anass Alami had been parachuted to this job in June
2009 by Mohammed VI, following Mounir Majidi's suggestion
...
Along those same lines, one can
point to the calm Ali Fassi Fihri ,head of the offices of water and electricity, who was not reluctant to favor Nareva, Mohammed VI's business that was specialized in renewable energy
...
Since 2006, he himself presided over
this association
...
The consultant Hicham Chbihi is with them,
who suggests coaching sessions with the elite of Moroccan capitalism; Moncef Belkhayat, then Minister of Youth and Sports, known,
according to the press, for driving an opulent Audi A8 at the taxpayers' expense, whose rental supposedly cost 1 million dirhams annually; Hassan Mansouri, the discreet but powerful director of the royal
company Primarios, which was the central purchasing agency for the
palaces; and finally, Abbas Azzouzi, who ran the television channel
Médi 1 after having demonstrated his arrogance in the job as director
of Tourism
...
The king's friend,
goes hunting for big game on the margins of politics, diplomacy, the
economy -- and even teaching
...
!
Another man, Khalil Hachimi Idrissi, was also named to the MAP in
2011, again by El Himma
...
!
On another equally distinguished level, one could mention the man
in the shadows who did El Himma's dirty political jobs, a man from
the Rif region in northern Morocco, by the name of Ilyas el-Omari
...
The organization chart for this party, completely artificially created,
also reveals that El Himma took care to place one of his pawns there,
Mohamed Cheikh Biadillah, an ex-founding member of the Polisario
Front who joined the monarchy
...
!
But El Himma's biggest catch remains unquestionably the businessman Aziz Akhennouch
...
!
!
How Do You Take over a Soccer Stadium?!
Devoid of scruples, controlling the entire country, the king's men are
indifferently interested in all sectors of the economy
...
The scandal of the FUS club (Fath Union Sport) is evidence of the
139
The Predator-King
...
!
Yet in 2008, optimism dominated the ranks of soccer fans: the
king's private secretary was just chosen to direct the FUS
...
And of course, because of his closeness to the monarchy
Majidi is in a position to bring wealth and success to the club
...
Everyone applauded -- journalists, the administrative council of the city of Rabat, sports associations -- and it was rare to find
anyone who guessed at that time Majidi's somber plans
...
!
The man rapidly set to work
...
On the menu: handing
the Belvedere stadium over to the FUS for a symbolic one dirham
against the vague promise of granting a parcel of land located outside
the city
...
117!
On the contract for the transfer of the stadium, the mention "sale" is
crossed out and replaced by "Tafwit passation" which means "transfer
117 Mohamed Jamaï, Ali Amar, Mouaad Rhandi, “La Gifle, Affaire FUS, le secrétaire du roi à
l’épreuve de la démocratie,” Le Journal hedomadaire, no
...
140
without financial compensation
...
!
From November 2007, a Society for the Development and Promotion of Sports (SDPS) was commercially registered before being put
on hold
...
Majidi then created two other enterprises, subsidiaries of the FUS company
...
The elected officials even envisaged a moment at which to conclude another agreement with a second enterprise created by Majidi,
FUS Gestion
...
118!
Fortunately, a sudden burst of honor prevented them from stooping
to that level
...
In April 2011, the city council of Rabat even seeks to question the contract linking it to the FUS
and to Mounir Majidi, but today its determination seems to have sunk
like a soufflé
...
Even music
festivals, genuine celebrations by the people in Morocco, fail to escape his attention
...
"!
In the beginning, the event started from a basically good royal intention: offer the kingdom's capital city a festival worthy of its name
...
141
The Predator-King
...
!
At first, the project was wisely handed over to someone in the inner
circle of the Palace, who today runs the royal College, Abdeljalil
Lahjomri, a man of culture
...
"High-level cultural events, with discussions,
and the arrival on scene of well-known and lesser-known performers,
but always interesting
...
119 !
In 2006, unfortunately, Mawazine went through a serious financial
crisis
...
It was then that he set
himself up with his team in the presidency of the association Maroc
Cultures, organizer of the festival
...
Definitely more drop-dead showbiz, Shakira, Stevie Wonder, Sting, Elton John were invited…it was a especially about
attracting masses of people from then on
...
And so, in 2009, Lalla
Selma, the discreet red-headed wife of Mohammed VI, as well as
their son Hassan, were present at Whitney Houston's concert
...
A single exit was opened to evacuate thousands
of spectators, and some families of the victims have still not yet been
compensated
...
!
!
In the world of business, there is an expression known as "the
Mawazine tax" which refers to the tacit obligation of institutions in the
kingdom, as well as large companies, private as well as public, to un-
119 Interview with the authors, Casablanca, September 2011
...
With a budget of 62 million dirhams in
2011, the monies raised by the association were not sufficient
...
He wore many hats, as a result of which he was in contact
with numerous officials
...
In
2010, the city of Rabat discreetly gave 1,1 million dirhams to
Mawazine
...
And that was
not all
...
!
The private sector did not seem to be outdone
...
123 Maroc
Télécom supposedly "subscribed" to the tune of 1,3 million dirhams
...
124!
120 The first name has been changed
...
122 See also Aïcha Akalay, Hassan Hamdani and Mehdi Michbal, “Mawazine, un miracle royal,”
TelQuel, no
...
123 Ibid
...
143
The Predator-King
...
Thus, in its edition of May 11, 2011,
L'Economiste explains, regarding the lenders to the festival, that in
2011 Mawazine was subsidized in the amount of 21 million dirhams,
or 34% of the budget for the event
...
Among them, we might cite in particular two
companies based on capital from the Emirates, JLEC and Maarbar,
but also Maroc Télécom, l'Office chérifien des phosphates (OCP), Lafarge Maroc, as well as subsidiaries of the French firms Accor and
Véolia
...
No
sponsor among those we have contacted wished to reveal his contribution to the subsidizing of Mawazine,"126 explained L'Economiste
...
"During the time the festival ran, they were asked, additionally, to buy
VIP boxes for the exorbitant price of 400,000 dirhams, in other words
the cost of a moderately comfortable apartment, as well as cards for
2000 dirhams each that gave them the right to enter the VIP section
...
From the
first troubles in Morocco, in February 2011, hostile slogans directed
not only against Mounir Majidi, but also against Mawazine, bloomed
on the posters
...
!
125 Badhir Thiam, “Mawazine, Maroc Cultures peaufine son modèle économique,” L’Économiste,
no
...
126 Ibid
...
"We did not really know if it would be held or
not
...
" Then towards
mid-April 2011, relief came: Mohammed VI gave the go-ahead
...
Thus the king had decided
...
A French media publication, Africa Intelligence, began making waves by publishing news that wreaked havoc in the
highest echelons of the Palace
...
Bearing a huge grudge, he asked an American court to award him
$130 million in damages from his ex-employer
...
S
...
Jorf Lasfar
providing nearly half the electricity in Morocco, this power station is
considered on of the most profitable contracts in the world
...
!
Especially of note, is the fact that in the complaint he filed, Peter
Barker-Homek affirmed that not only had he not accepted being sent
to Morocco, but that he also refused to underwrite five seasons of a
music festival
...
635, September 15, 2010, and Intelligence Online, no
...
128 Intelligence Online, no
...
145
The Predator-King
...
BarkerHomek explains in it that the president of Taqa had asked him to
"hand over $5 million a year to Hassan Bouhemou, PDG of the SNI,
in order to finance a music festival […] so that Taqa would give the
green light to go ahead with the extension of the electrical power station of Jorf Lasfar
...
!
As for Hassan Bouhemou, he denied the whole thing and called it a
conspiracy
...
!
During the month of May 2011, Bouhemou even came up with a
communiqué in which one can read: "I am not, nor have I ever been,
'the moving force behind' nor any moving force at all, nor a member
of any organizational structure of the Mawazine festival, and as a result in no case was I its intermediary for collecting or depositing
funds
...
!
!
Too late, wrong has been done and the logo of JLEC, one of the
principal partners of the festival and subsidiary of Taqa in Morocco, is
wiped off the promotional material for the 2011 edition
...
With
his usual finesse, this "communicator" had publicly insulted, and several times over, on social networks, the protesters from the February
129 Maghreb confidentiel, no
...
lakome
...
130 Entretien with one of the authors, Paris, December 2011
...
He came surrounded by his lieutenants, but in reality the VIP box was almost empty," Marwan recalls
...
"In order to put off track
the man in the street, and pretend that the festival was enjoying an
enormous success, the communicators from Maroc Cultures falsified
the figures as to the number of spectators present at the concerts
...
But their heart was not in it anymore
...
The wildest of rumors circulates at that
time among the team at Maroc Cultures
...
Undeniably, the
magic is gone
...
!
Soccer, music concerts
...
The system accelerates without
anyone being capable of putting on the brakes
...
!
!
147
The Predator-King
...
How France and Europe Finance Royal Projects!
!
"We are not the Red Cross
...
These last two years, we were unaware of fraud or
of a systematic misuse of public funds belonging to Moroccans
...
Comfortably set up in his luminous office in a modern neighborhood of
Rabat, he was head of the delegation of the European Union in Morocco
...
After having been a member of the administrative council of the European Investment Bank
(BEI) and of the oversight council of European Investment Funds
(FEI), he was named general manager for expansion at the European
Commission
...
Among the main advantages of this statute is the awarding of
numerous kinds of financial aid
...
Already under Hassan II, Brussels did not examine
expenses very closely
...
These funds were essentially intended to lift Moroccan rural areas out from under the underdeveloped state in which Hassan II had left them
...
!
131 European neighborhood and partnership instrument, Morocco, Strategy Paper 2007 - 2013
...
The objective: to help the countries
of the south reform their economic and social structures
...
In other words, an increase of nearly 60%
...
For the years 2011 to
2013 alone, Morocco should receive $748,670,850 in aid
...
"133 Paris also knows how to show its generosity to its Moroccan friend
...
!
Thus in 2009, $5176855 were released to Morocco ($509,431,500
in loans, $4,256,010 in subsidies, and $3,998,070 in shares
...
134 Is this really the highest priority during a period of
financial and economic crisis? That may be doubtful, insomuch as the
continuing position of wanting to protect Morocco from the islamists,
by giving it a financial transfusion to speed up its development, is at
132 Mid-term report from the Country Strategy Paper, Morocco, 2007 - 2013, and Programme
indicatif national 2011 - 2013
...
134 AFD 2010 annual report
...
Plundering Morocco
this point less convincing: in November 2011, the Moroccan islamists
carried, completely legally, the legislative elections…!
!
Those in charge of the AFC, having not responded to our requests
for an interview -- anymore than those of the BEI either -- we have
not ascertained the European budgetary allocations
...
!
Thus, the latest edition of the annual report from the AFD indicates
that in 2010 Morocco was the best financed country in the Mediterranean/Middle East, to the tune of $468,676,980
...
Moreover,
the budgetary allocations and recent financial assistance by the AFD
is perplexing
...
Sometimes on
his own behalf
...
!
!
The TGV, A Royal Whim!
Work on this mammoth railroad site was inaugurated with great
pomp and ceremony in the presence of Nicolas Sarkozy and the
Alawite sovereign on September 29, 2011
...
!
This victory of the TGV is worthy of a banana republic
...
The reality is less
grandiose
...
"Mohammed VI wanted his high-speed train
...
!
The fact that the high-speed trains was scarcely a part of the development plans by the ONCF, the Moroccan railroad company, supports the theory of a royal obsession
...
You could read that this project "required 1,8 billion
dirhams of financing" and provided "a reduction of one hour for the
Casablanca-Tangiers axis
...
!
The indignation was widespread and crossed the board from islamists to the far left
...
They are already gaining two hours on the
Casablanca-Tangiers route and will spend that time at a sidewalk
café
...
It was not a unbiased choice responding to the people’s
needs
...
136 Remarks obtained from Axel Tardieu, Tangiers 2011
...
Plundering Morocco
concludes that, according to him, "cities like Agadir, the east of the
country and Ouarzazate, in the south, are sorely lacking in public
transportation and connections to the rest of Morocco
...
Rabat thus was a victim of its own game
...
The result: the Germans, and to a lesser extent the Spanish, who were also constructing
high-speed trains, were absolutely furious
...
138!
Just this once, the BEI finally thus refrained from subsidizing Mohammed VI's TGV
...
Moreover, financial analysts questioned the profitability of the project as much as the necessity of putting subsidized trains on the tracks," Eneko Ladaburu admitted
...
138 Interview with one of the authors, Rabat, September 2011
...
152
Very embarrassed, the kingdom then turned towards France
...
(His employer did not follow through on our calls for an
interview
...
In any event, the AFD was undermined in its operation and became the financial arm of the Elysée in Africa,"140 he insisted
...
!
In reality, the agency indicated on its web site141 that France was financing 50% of the initial cost of the TGV, which came to 1,8 million
euros
...
In total, Mohammed VI's whim will end up costing nearly one billion euros to
French taxpayers! The icing on the cake, these loans are not even reimbursable for the try-color financial coffers, despite the sorry state in
which they were
...
If only
140 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, December 2011
...
ard
...
143 FASEP: Fonds d’aide au secteur privé [Financial Aid to the Private Sector]
153
The Predator-King
...
Not only did it not sell a single Rafale to
Morocco, but above and beyond that, it offered a TGV to its king, all
of this during a period of economic crisis! We are certainly light years
away from neocolonial practices in the kingdom of Morocco
...
Like for
the TGV, Mohammed VI got personally involved in the project, to the
point of coming regularly to inspect what had been completed on the
work-site
...
An engineer from the Ponts et
Chaussées, and familiar with royal business interests, Saïd El-Hadi
officiated for a long time, in fact, at the royal holding company SNI in
which he even ran the branch Sonasid
...
The program was made up of
two separate projects in reality; Tanger Med 1, with a capacity for
three million containers, and Tanger Med 2, intended for 5,2 million
containers
...
According to the annual report of this institution, the BEI also lent, in
2010, 40 million euros for Tanger Med 1 and 200 million euros for
Tanger Med 2
...
If Tanger Med 1,
with its terminals 1 and 2, in an unquestionable operational success
since 2007, not as much can be said about Tanger Med 2 (terminals
154
3 and 4) on which Mohammed VI insisted
...
The cause? The financial
and economic crisis, which caused the Communications director of
Tanger Med, Nadia Hachimi Alaoui, former editor-in-chief of the Journal hebdomadaire: "Tanger Med 2 is off by 15 months, terminal 4 is
operational but the opening of 3 will be determined by the demand of
the operators
...
The result of this bidding did nothing to stop the bad-mouthing which drew attention to the fact that,
contrary to PSA or Marsa, SNI had no experience in the ports industry
...
During
2008, Mohammed VI's holding company quietly withdrew from terminal 4, just as the Singapore-based PSA
...
!
!
!
Failing to operate the terminal at Tanger Med, Mohammed VI can
take comfort in the fact that some of the enterprises in which he is a
shareholder benefited greatly as a result of this port
...
9 billion dirhams in revenue for 2010), of which the SNI held 32% of the capital and the international shell giant Arcelor Mittal also had 32%
...
" At 6000 dirhams a ton on average, that
represents 306 million dirhams for Sonasid
...
Plundering Morocco
of SNI's capital did not weigh in the balance if we are to believe Tronji
...
Moreover,
we are very well set up commercially all over Morocco
...
!
Let us not forget that Lafarge Maroc, 50% owned by SNI and 50%
by the French cement company Lafarge
...
For Nadia Hachimi Alaoui, it is entirely natural in the sense that Lafarge is
situated in the north of the country and working with her in Tangiers
puts a lid on the logistical expenses connected with transporting cement…!
!
The King Grabs All Contracts in The Wind-Farm Sector!
Every king has his great projects: dams and irrigation for Hassan II,
renewable energy for his son
...
!
The development of renewable energy is a major work project for
another royal enterprise: Nareva
...
!
Right from the start, the firm (where no one answers the telephone)
is fond of secrecy, and its officers politely declined requests from
journalists
...
When we
decide to communicate anything regarding our company and our
projects, we will not fail to contact you," Ahmed Nakkouch, the CEO,
explains by e-mail
...
The strategic
choice of this form of energy is well-founded
...
To move towards new sources of energy, based
on wind and sun is perfectly logical
...
Or, put differently, $1
...
144!
!
These projects, conceived at the national level, are all led by men
chosen by the king
...
Launched in 2009, the plan for solar energy was
headed by Masen (Agence Marocaine pour l'Energie Solaire), placed
under the management of one Mustapha Bakkoury, a close friend of
Fouad Ali El Himma who had earlier presided over the CDG
...
!
For an investment of nine billion dollars, he was seeking to put into
operation a 2000 megawatt output145 and immediately generated the
good will of the usual bidders in the Alawite kingdom
...
146!
144 Blog Green Business, accessible at the following address: blog
...
fr/green-business
...
masen
...
ma
146 Press release from the AFD July 8, 2011
...
Plundering Morocco
The economic potential of the solar energy market did not escape
Nareva's attention, as can be seen in this interview with the director
of the royal subsidiary's energy business sector in Le Soir-Echos, in
April 2010: "Nareva has solar energy projects on the books within the
framework of Plan Solaire Maroc for two gigawatts
...
"147 Alas! In February 2011, Nareva, which had just participated in bidding for an important solar power facility in Ouarzazate,
learned with annoyance that the group of which it was a part along
with the German firm Siemens had not been hired
...
Nareva will
have to start up the two power facilities it already owns before claiming to do anything else
...
Thus, in June 2010, the
monarch inaugurates a Moroccan Program that included wind power,
endowed with funding of $3,5 million
...
148 These projects will be implemented
within the structure of public-private partnerships, and each of them
will require the creation of a company in which the National Office of
Electricity (ONE) would be present
...
It was, in fact, run by one of Mounir
147 “Ferme éolienne d’Akhfenir: les travaux pour juin 2010,” Le Soir échos, April 19, 2010
...
158
Majidi's pawns, the loyal Ali Fassi Fihri
...
!
Is it the result of its industrial expertise or of its privileged relationship with ONE, or both at the same time? Whatever the case, in April
2010, Nareva signs an agreement with the French firm Alstom (which
constructed the TGV) to build a wind farm in Akhfenir, a region which
is 400 kilometers south of Agadir
...
ONE
...
There's no surprise in the fact
that ONE chose the consortium composed of Nareva and the British
International Power (IP), on the basis of an initial public offering
...
The fact, on the other hand, that
Nareva's project was 75% financed by bank credits does not seem to
have created any problems149…The ONA certainly works in mysterious ways
...
The subsidiary of SNI-ONA is used to this
...
However, with one exception, they all maintained business relationships
149 “BP et AWB financent l’éolien de Tarfaya,” Les Échos (Maroc), April 27, 2011
...
Plundering Morocco
with the king or were public bodies150: ONDA (Office des Aéroports),
ONCF (Chemins de Fer), ONEP (Office de l'Eau), SAMIR (oil), Lafarge (cement), OCP (phosphates), and SONASID (steel)
...
Actually,
ONE absorbed ONEP several years ago and we thus are once again
in the unusual situation where ONEP will be buying electricity from
the privately owned company Nareva, whereas the job of its parent
company, ONE, is to produce electricity!"!
"The renewable energy sector is undergoing radical restructuring
...
But the biggest surprise is yet to come
...
This time it is not
public companies which are forced to get supplied by Nareva…but
Moroccans themselves! With any significant experience in the area of
coal, could Nareva justify winning such an offer? The question is obviously irrelevant from that point on since we are dealing with a company in which the king himself has interests
...
And while EDF was try-
150 “Nareva Holding devient fournisseur indépendant d’électricité,” La Vie éco, April 26, 2010
...
160
ing to digest this cover-up, Nareva could delight in being assured of a
captive market with ONE, which became its main client
...
Royal destiny, one could argue
...
The King Preys on The People
!
!
A charity ball given by Moroccan business owners to help reintegrate young delinquents back into society
...
The auctioneer's gavel moved in function of the hands raised to
bid
...
All those present
recognized Mounir Majidi
...
The bidding completed, he
turned off his phone and immediately left the room!
This intrusion by they king, this way of indirectly inviting himself to
the ceremonies aimed both to taunt Moroccan management which he
liked to marginalize each time a bit more, and to gauge the nature of
how his gift was being received
...
" !
!
Mohammed VI, if indeed he chooses to behave like an entrepreneur, detests the world of Moroccan business and, in a much
greater sense, the upper classes of his country
...
Plundering Morocco
he inherited from his father
...
Hassan II held a
deep grudge against them, which he passed on to his son
...
!
Brecht, in a famous statement, pointed out dictators who were infuriated by their rebellious population, and who were merely trying to
change those whom they were ruling
...
He would even like to be thought of as a
monarch infatuated with modernity, but the weight attached to the
power elite surrounding him too often prevents him from being that
...
The post office, in a fundamental deficit, has been
producing a stamp for the last 11 years intended to raise funds for the
Mohammed VI Foundation and its humanitarian and social projects
based on sustainable development
...
Buyers
of stamps, like businessmen, who rush to auctions such as the one
mentioned before, know that they have no choice
...
"!
That was the case in February 2004, when the region of Al-Hoceima in the north of the country, was devastated by a violent earthquake
...
That image, that the country and the world will retain, is however, a far cry
from the reality
...
Help to the population was delayed for 24 hours
...
!
!
"This Can't Go On Any Longer!" !
In 2010, Mohammed VI will finally give the green light to the merger
between the two holding companies he controls, the ONA and the
SNI
...
Certain people in management share the analysis of the February
20th Movement: this can't go on any longer
...
!
This merger of the ONA and the SNI, announced so often and always postponed, will reveal what was behind it very quickly: a real
sleight-of-hand
...
!
The primary reason for surprise: Lazard, the advisory bank who
was supporting the transaction, the most important that the Moroccan
stock market had ever known, does not mention even once in its 550page report, that the transaction involved two entities belonging to the
king
...
!
Moreover, if the rumor of a merger circulated for nearly three years,
its implementation ended up surprising everyone
...
At the time of the merger, it carried a net
debt of 8
...
et autres sociétés royales,” TelQuel, no
...
163
The Predator-King
...
In addition,
compared to the ONA's 30,000 employees, the SNI counted only 15
people, if we are to believe a man who was a Palace insider
...
The usual
council members, taken by surprise, noted the presence of Mounir
Majidi and Hassan Bouhemou
...
The ONA
was about to be absorbed by its parent company, the SNI
...
!
The next day, as soon as the stock market opened in Casablanca,
the trading of shares in the ONA, the SNI, and dozens of their affiliates, was suspended
...
!
Four days later, on March 30, probably by pure chance, the AlMaghrib bank, which was both, as will be recalled, at the cost of an
unbelievable confusion all over the map, the central Bank of the
country and one of the banks under royal influence, lowered the cash
reserve requirements for banks from 8% to 6%, most likely in order
for them to lend more easily to the new group
...
!
The watchdog for the stock market soon would authorize the two
public buy-out offers (OPR) dealing with the SNI and ONA shares,
first stage in the upcoming merger
...
Lafarge, Danone, Axa, Banco Santander thus
all participated around the table, not by investing but by maintaining
their continuing equity
...
A French official close to the case thus brings up the "illusion of
a French presence
...
"153!
Several people familiar with what was happening confirm that the
French companies had their arms twisted to take an equity stake or
remain in the capital of the new group
...
But who still wants to do that?!
Another advantage, in withdrawing from the stock market, the new
entity avoids all the regulations and requirements for transparency
...
From now on, the royal octopus will be able to stretch
out its tentacles without being seen
...
Siger, the royal holding company created in January 2002, would belong exclusively to Mohammed VI and would control 50% of the ONA
...
This investment product, revealed at the time of the merger, bears the stamp of "His Royal Highness" an imprimatur characterizing businesses belonging to the royal
family
...
But it had only an extremely modest operating capital
153 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, November 2011
...
Plundering Morocco
of 300,000 dirhams, which allowed it to barely pay for 150 shares of
the SNI…154!
It was also the case for Copropar
...
!
To sum it up, this merger had been conceived as a veritable series
of absorptions of the largest by the smallest
...
155!
Copropar is an impressively empty shell: it has no employees, while
at the same time it is supposed to raise 7
...
A sum three
times greater than the sum of its own funds…
...
!
On December 31, 2010, the merger is finalized and Hassan
Bouhemou heads the new ensemble whose operation remains completely opaque
...
!
This vagueness did not prevent the financial markets authority to
give the green light to a merger of considerable scale (22 billion
dirhams), implemented via operations seemingly devoid of the required amounts of capital and whose owners were unknown
...
Moroccan banks were all
154 Ibid
...
166
"authorized" by the central bank to grant additional credits to the new
ensemble
...
These demands would be met without
resistance, obviously
...
!
Another surprising aspect: the debt issued in order to underwrite the
transaction was secured by all the institutional organizations of the
country -- insurance companies, CDG, retirement funds, and banks
...
Leaving unsolved a great mystery: did Mohammed VI and
his family, who owned this new giant, finance it and if so, to what extent?!
!
Every Day, The People Make Money for The King!
By spearheading this merger, Majidi and Bouhemou envisaged
making strategic withdrawals
...
Subsidies which bore
on the front-line necessities but which, at the same time now proved
of greater profit to the king than to the impoverished population of the
country
...
!
Sectors where the capacity to generate profits is not weighed down
by competition and derives from serious negotiations with the State
...
are all supplied
by his companies
...
" It was an economic system not "state-run" but in
a way, "royal-run
...
Plundering Morocco
Morocco is definitely a unique case
...
In Morocco it is the
people who, every day that God creates, add to the wealth of the king
by buying the products of his companies
...
The stakes are high: will the moderate islamists from the
PJD (Parti de la justice et du développement) carry the vote, and will
their leader Abdelilah Benkirane be named Prime Minister by the
king? In the summer of 2011, the leaders of that party, sincerely carried away by ideas of democracy for the most part, did not believe
this would happen
...
!
In a political system in which, since Hassan II, election results have
often been more or less manipulated by the Interior Minister, in terms
of the interests of the Palace, the Palace itself controls the game
...
!
In the shadow of the makhzen, one man stands at the ready then,
to take over as Prime Minister: the Minister of Economy and Finance,
Salaheddine Mèzouar, who also leads the RNI (Rassemblement National des Indépendants) party
...
It has been said
that L'Observateur, a Moroccan publication, prepared a headline
156 Interview with one of the authors, Rabat, September 2011
...
48 hours after the official victory announcement of the islamists from
the PJD, the king asks Abdelilah Benkirane to form a new government
...
For example, he
was against his party's participation in protests by the February 20
Movement, but he had declared on several occasions, during his
meetings, that it was necessary to remove power from the hands of
El Himma and Majidi out of the seat of power
...
The man had always been a fervent supporter of the monarchy and if his relations with El Himma were horrendous, he maintained a privileged rapport with general Hosni
Benslimane, the head of the royal gendarmerie, considered the
monarchy's strongest defender
...
The truth is that Benkirane, his Majesty's Islamist, is a
man whose entire career, for over a dozen years, was formed in the
shadow of the Palace
...
Thus, in January 2011, while the
Tunisian president Ben Ali leaves power and flees with his family to
Saudi Arabia, the Moroccan journalist Ali Lmrabet announced that
Mohammed Vi arrived in France, at his castle in Betz, located in the
Oise, and purchased by Hassan II
...
Plundering Morocco
the news157, specifying that "Mohammed VI is said to have gone there
very discreetly" and "without his family
...
!
That would be the case however, as the protest movement that began on February 20, 2011 would show, but with much less intensity
...
It
was a diversity that also characterized the political sensitivities of the
demonstrators
...
"!
Faced with these demonstrators, police repression begins in
earnest and a number of protests will be violently broken up, causing
at least seven deaths over several weeks
...
Confronting the crisis,
his lack of a political sense and his hesitations were shown in the
clear light of day
...
!
157 Pierre Haski, “Le discret voyage du roi du Maroc dans son château de l’Oise,”
www
...
com, January 29, 2011
...
If
the Prime Minister will come out of whatever party wins the elections
from now on, and is no longer arbitrarily named by the king, Mohammed VI's basic power is maintained
...
While the February
20 demonstrators demand that the king in person should no longer be
viewed as ruling by divine right, the word "sacredness" is merely replaced by "inviolability" and "obligation of respect
...
A disdain that Mohammed VI will make a point of showing many times
over in the months that follow
...
Within a
strained social setting, and while the February 20 Movement is calling
for a boycott and the demonstrations continue throughout Morocco,
the Interior Minister announces that 98% of the voters said "yes"…
...
A tally that, especially, betrayed both the worry that invaded
the Palace and the lack of will to move the system towards democracy
...
The new government of the islamist Benkirane is in the
process of being formed, and these nominations look like a rape…
...
On December 7, 2011 the official Moroccan
news agency (MAP) causes a shockwave by announcing the nomination of Fouad Ali El Himma, the king's friend, to the post of advisor to
the royal cabinet
...
Plundering Morocco
HImma frequently provokes boos by protesters who see in him one of
those to blame for the political and economic stalemate in which the
country found itself
...
!
That nomination, which came exclusively from Mohammed VI, was
only the tip of the iceberg
...
At first, the legal expert Abdeltif Memouni and the Moroccan ambassador to France, El Mostafa Sahel, who
was, however, ill, became part of the cabinet again
...
He was an ex-minister of Justice, Moroccan Ambassador to Spain, and a specialist in regionalism,
which was a concept dear to the king's heart: Omar Azziman
...
From all of his 41 years of age, the young minister simply
did not have what it took to be a royal advisor, but to his great credit
he had signed agreements, a while back, that dealt with Qatari, Emirate, and Saudi investments, to the tune of two billion euros, with a
view towards developing tourism in Morocco
...
He also shows that he will be,
from that moment on, running against the grain of the hopes and
base movements tearing at the social fabric in Arab and Muslim countries
...
No more than did the
fact that a young unemployed graduate, Abdelwahab Zeidoun, set
himself on fire and perished from his burns several days later
...
To everyone's surprise, in February 2012, a royal pardon was bestowed on such diverse personalities as radical islamists, the boxer Zakaria Moumni,
et…
...
!
Jacques Chirac, then Nicolas Sarkozy never stopped singing the
praises of Mohammed VI and Franco-Moroccan friendship the stakes
of which, in particular economic, no longer were particularly significant
...
"!
A speech that turns a blind eye and recalls the one given by that
same President during a State visit to Tunisia in April 2008
...
" Will it be the
same thing with Morocco, at a time when the main concern of the
French ambassador to Rabat, the ex "Mister Africa" of Nicolas
Sarkozy, Bruno Joubert, is to sell nuclear energy to Moroccans? After
the TGV, the EPR…
...
Paris
and Rabat scarcely hold any interest for each other
...
Rabat is slowly drifting in
the direction of the Persian Gulf, while the French élite is taking less
173
The Predator-King
...
The networks woven under Hassan II have
faded away and have not been replaced
...
Taking after the U
...
during
the 1970s, which attempted to support the Shah of Iran while the early stages of ayatollah Khomeini's revolution were being felt
...
"!
Rare are those French diplomats, at the Quai d'Orsay or the Elysée
Palace, who are seriously addressing the turmoil and revolutions
happening in the Arab world
...
While the diplomats from the U
...
embassy are
meeting and establishing ties with key actors in civil society, including
islamists, the French, for their part, prefer to imitate the makhzen in
its most vile form: the attitude of the servant who never flinches and
always agrees with his master