HIBAPRESS – Fez
The Administrative Court in the city of Fez issued, in two preliminary rulings, decisions obligating the state, represented by the head of government, to pay financial sums totaling 847 million centimes to a party supplier, in connection with financial dues related to services rendered by the company during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the first case, the court ordered the payment of 7,286,400 dirhams to the plaintiff, along with 10,000 dirhams in compensation for delay, with the application of legal consequences, including legal interest.
In a second case, the court ordered the payment of 1,184,150 dirhams, in addition to 10,000 dirhams in compensation for delay. The details of the case date back to the period of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, during which the company in question, according to the information in the file, provided services related to the provision of meals for security personnel, auxiliary forces, and health sector employees, from March 20 to June 30, 2020. After years of claiming financial dues related to these services, the party supplier resorted to the judiciary to demand payment of the amounts considered due to his company, before the case took other dimensions following a complaint filed with the Public Prosecutor at the Court of Appeal in Fez. The complainant had filed a complaint accusing the head of the tenders department at the Prefecture of the Fez-Meknes Region of delaying the settlement of his financial dues. This file was followed by judicial investigations and inquiries, which resulted, according to the judicial rulings issued in the connected criminal case, in the prosecution of a number of defendants. In this context, the Financial Crimes Chamber of the Fez Court of Appeal issued a decision on October 22, 2025, upholding the preliminary rulings issued against three defendants, including the head of the budget and tenders department at the Prefecture of the Fez-Meknes Region, who was sentenced to five years in prison and a fine of 100,000 dirhams. The court also upheld the ruling against a contractor, who was sentenced to four years in prison and a fine of 50,000 dirhams, in addition to a third defendant who received a prison sentence of 18 months and a fine of 30,000 dirhams. The acts subject to prosecution, according to the operative parts of the aforementioned rulings, include crimes such as bribery, participation in embezzlement and misappropriation of public and private funds, forgery and use of forgery, and the exclusion of competitors, with the charges attributed to each defendant varying according to their position in the file.
