Tags : Morocco, PAM, Said Naciri, Abdenbi Bioui, Le Malien, Ben Brahim, trafic de drogue, Wydad AC,
About twenty individuals, including the leader of the most successful football club in the country and a regional president, have been placed in provisional detention in Casablanca.
An international drug trafficking operation forms the core of the case that has fueled speculation in the Moroccan press for over a week. Who are the key players? About twenty individuals, including members of law enforcement, government officials, business leaders, a notary, a tourist promoter, but especially two men who are the focus of attention. One, Saïd Naciri, is the head and main financier of Wydad Casablanca, the most successful football club in Morocco. The other, Abdenbi Bioui, an entrepreneur born in Oujda, is one of the prominent figures in construction and real estate in the country.
These personalities also hold partisan responsibilities, as is often the case in Morocco, where politics is closely tied to business. Messrs. Naciri and Bioui are indeed members of the Authenticity and Modernity Party (PAM), which is part of the government. The former has been a deputy since 2011, initially in Zagora in the south and later in Casablanca, where he took over the prefecture in 2021. He is one of the strong figures of the PAM in the economic capital. The latter is a former parliamentarian. He leads the party in the Oriental, a region in eastern Morocco that he has presided over since 2015. Both, along with 18 others, were placed in provisional detention on December 22 at Oukacha prison.
The numerous charges against Messrs. Naciri and Bioui range from international drug trafficking to the formation of a criminal gang, money laundering, embezzlement, and falsification of official documents. All these charges stem from a third man: El Hadj Ahmed Ben Ibrahim, known as the « Malian. » Born in Kidal to a Moroccan mother, this drug trafficker has been serving a prison sentence in Morocco since 2019. His revelations, provided to the judicial police and reported by Jeune Afrique magazine, led to the referral of Messrs. Naciri and Bioui to the public prosecutor and their incarceration.
A shipment of 40 tons of cannabis
According to the « Malian, » the two elected officials would have participated alongside him in a vast cannabis trafficking operation since 2010: several tens of tons of resin produced in Morocco would have been sent abroad each year. Until Mr. Ben Ibrahim’s arrest in 2015. Arrested in Mauritania with a large quantity of cocaine, he is sentenced to four years in prison. His alleged accomplices would then, according to him, have taken advantage of his absence to seize his assets in Morocco, including several apartments and a villa in the upscale neighborhood of California in Casablanca.
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#Morocco #Maroc #PAM #drug #SaidNaciri #AbdenbiBioui #BenBrahik #LeMalien