HIBAPRESS – Mohamed Daher
The Criminal Chamber of First Instance in charge of financial crimes in the city of Marrakech ruled this Friday morning to convict the former mayor, Mohamed Larbi Belqaid, and his first deputy, Younes Bensliman, on charges of squandering public funds and participating in that, related to the negotiated deals case.
The judicial panel sentenced the former mayor and his deputy to two years in prison for each of them, with a fine of 20,000 dirhams each, and ordered the defendants to jointly pay in favor of the civil party, the Moroccan state represented by the Head of Government and the Minister of Economy, Finance and Administrative Reform, compensation of four million dirhams (4,000,000 dirhams).
Following this file, Mohamed Larbi Belqaid, the former mayor of the city of Marrakech, and his deputy Younes Bensliman, are being prosecuted for the crime of squandering public funds for the mayor and the crime of participating in squandering public funds for his deputy, regarding the scandal of negotiated deals related to COP 22, which cost more than 28 billion centimes.
The prosecution of the defendants came after a complaint submitted by a human rights association to the Public Prosecutor at the Court of Appeal, through which it demanded the opening of a judicial investigation into the suspicion of squandering public funds by the mayor and his first deputy Younes Bensliman, following the negotiated deals that they initiated on the occasion of the International Conference on Climate Change (COP 22), which the city of Marrakech hosted at the end of 2016.
