Table of Contents!

! ! !

Preface 1!

!

Chapter I. Mohammed VI As King Midas 3 ! An Economic Coup d’Etat 4! The King’s Secret Garden 6!

!

Chapter II. 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. His Father’s Son 20! “Whoever Disobeys Me, Disobeys God” 23! “A Mistake of Chromosones” 27! A Legal Absolutism 31!

!

Chapter IV. 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. From Palace to Poultry Pen 47! An Investment Strike Fabricated from The Ground up 49! El Himma’s Fit of Jealous Rage 53! Terrorism Rears Its Ugly Head 54! “They’re Forcing Us to Return to The Era of Oufkir” 56!

!

Chapter VI. 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. How to Manufacture Guilt 73! Royal Favor and Disgrace 75! Any Head Appearing Higher Than The Others ! Must Be Cut Down to Size 78! “Take It Back, I Don’t Want to Keep This Document!” 81! A King Who Is Close to His Money 84! The Strategy of Applying The Tourniquet 86!

!

Chapter VIII. 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. The State Subsidizes His Majesty’s Enterprises 101! A Very Profitable Compensation Fund 103! The ONA Decides Duty Rates on Imported Milk 107! Royal Tantrums. Advisors Are Beaten 109! The Royal Domains: “Everything Is Confidential” 112! Freedom of Expression Is Devastated 113!

!

Chapter X. The King’s Whims 115! Soliciting Bribes 116! Greater Corruption under Mohamed VI Than under Hassan II 117! A Secretive Royal Fortune 120! “Would You Like Some More Pasta, Your Majesty?” 122! “Yes, I’m Entitled to It!” 124! Crisis in Marrakech 125! When The King’s Mass-Distribution Stores Violate The Law 127! The Royal Gold Mines Bleed The People Dry 129! “Call Bouygues Immediately!” 130!

!

Chapter XI. 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. How France And Europe Finance Royal Projects 148! The TGV, A Royal Whim 150! All for Free 154! The King Grabs All Contracts in The Wind-Farm Sector 156! The King Sells His Electricity…to The Moroccan Citizens 159!

!

Chapter XIII. 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. proedatorius, from proeda, prey.] ! Synonyms: bloodsucker, buzzard, harpy, vampire, vulture, wolf!

! ! !

Preface  ! Our book describes a royal plundering. Since his accession to the throne in 1999, Mohammed VI took control of Morocco's economy in a completely arbitrary fashion, relying on a strategy of hoarding and monopolization that was characterized by the unbridled corruption of those close to him.     In 2012, the Moroccan monarchy still enforces silence and secrecy on its actions, often making our inquiry tricky to carry out.! For several months, we met with more than 40 witnesses on Moroccan soil and also abroad, as a precautionary measure.    In order to avoid leaks, we sometimes revealed only a portion of our project to respondents. Those who accepted to cooperate with us can be divided into three categories: men close to the Palace, or who represented the king's most intimate entourage, able to describe habits, modes of operation, and schemes; experts, whose valuable skills enabled us to break though the opacity of royal enterprises in such areas as agriculture, finance, etc.; and finally politicians, who had knowledge of certain sensitive questions we wanted to raise.

!

   They accepted to talk to us but, with the exception of five among them, all requested that we guarantee their anonymity and that we modify the details that would have allowed them to be identified.! The Moroccan monarchy established a veritable "culture of submissiveness" among the power élite. But especially, it instilled fear:

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

when it swooped down, royal disfavor brought social condemnation, as well as financial and professional retribution.!

!

   We want to thank all those who helped us and who were aware that the royal excesses and abuses we were describing needed to be exposed. They know our deep affection for Morocco and its people. We have each worked as journalists in this country. 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. That enabled her to learn what was going on behind the scenes of political and economic activity in the kingdom, and thus of its protagonists. 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. This experience provided him with a privileged vantage point from which to observe the functioning of the Palace and the Court.!

!

  In Morocco, the monarchy remains the sole source of power. It continues to prosper because it was smart enough, throughout the decades, to transform public life and its institutions into a shadow play of murky, gray areas. The king's excesses are protected by a kind of omertà that we decided to break with this book. We are dismantling not only the mechanisms of the system, but also the internal psychological motivations that changed the so-called "king of paupers" into a true "predator-king."!

! ! ! ! ! !

2

!

I. Mohammed VI As King Midas!

In July 2009, the American magazine Forbes came up with a surprise when it published its annual list of the wealthiest personalities in the world. 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 $2.5 billion. 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.! In 2009, the world financial crisis that took place a year earlier, had hit all sources of revenue with full force, including those from the wealthiest sectors. 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.! Of course, between these "top ten" among whom the Moroccan monarch, and the lower portion of the category in which the country of Morocco was classified, a sizable gap existed.! In the world report on human development drawn up by the PNUD, the U.N. 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." and the poverty level of the country reached 18.1%.1 Better yet, more than than five million Moroccans live on $1.202 a day, and the minimum legal daily salary does not exceed $0.70. To make things worse, in 2008, Morocco's

1 Fédoua Tounassi, “Mohammed VI, un roi en or massif”, Courrier international, no. 975, July 9,

2009. 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. We have converted 1 euro to $1.20.

3

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

public debt leapt by 10% in a single year, to reach 11,9 billion euros, or 20% of the GNP.! The ratings by Forbes did little more than discreetly lift a corner of the veil on the scope of the royal fortune which is, in fact, even larger. In particular, it said nothing about, or ignored, the mechanisms put into place to amass such enormous wealth. It linked the king's fortune to the increase in the price of phosphates, of which Morocco is one of the world's foremost producers and, in so doing, made a mistake on the period designated.!

!

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. This was an arbitrary move which, all things considered, is comparable to that used by the reigning Saudi family, which cornered a good segment of the oil wealth.! "My country belongs to me," Hassan II believed, and he applied this principle with great consistency. His life-style was particularly extravagant. He liked luxury, sumptuous expenditures, and yet never did his name appear in the indexes of the the wealthiest personalities. If his son, in less than 10 years in power, managed this quantitative leap, it is because he indulged in a kind of plundering of his country's economy. 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.! Everywhere, throughout the world, authoritarian leaders or dictators diverted a portion of the national wealth for their personal use. Most frequently, it concerned primary resources, like oil. But this pillaging took on a somewhat illicit nature, flaunting the law.! 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. In all appearances, this country 4

comes off as having a normal economic system, fairly sophisticated in certain respects: banks, businesses, the private sector. It represents a reality which one should actually speak of in the past tense. The Moroccan economy sector looks more Potemkin-like, and this façade covers up the royal predation.! 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." The king, from then on, becomes the lead banker, underwriter, exporter, producer/farmer of his country. He controls the agricultural sector as well, mass distribution, and energy technology. It is a muted power-grab. 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. And that is precisely why their actions go hand in glove with silence and ignorance.! The revelations in Forbes were followed by a particularly absurd example of censorship. In July 2009, the French weekly Courrier international was prohibited on Moroccan territory. 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. This over zealous action by the censors, at precisely the wrong moment, conveyed just how nervous they were as a result of the revelations concerning the royal fortune -an unbroken taboo, until then, as was everything personally related to the king.! ! Ascending to the throne in 1999, Mohammed VI became fondly known as the "king of the poor." Ten years later, it would be discovered that he had become the "king of shrewd business." Still more shocking, he actually enjoyed being introduced as a "businessman," 5

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

a term which is, in this case, meaningless since his position of absolute power allowed him to dismiss any and all competition.! 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. Could one even imagine the queen of England or the king of Spain as the head of the most powerful financial, industrial, and agricultural enterprises of their respective countries, operating in such a way as to barely mask the monopolistic nature of their control?! The 38 years of Hassan II's reign were marked by coups d'état and various crises. But the man was a formidable political animal, with an unerring and impressive survival instinct. In the years between 1960 and 1970, when most of the newly independent countries were choosing socialist modes of organization, he shifted nimbly towards a market economy, all the while implementing a strategy of hoarding private income.!

!

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. However, despite being a constant presence in the political limelight, he basically was indifferent to economic issues. 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. However, he is hyperactive in the control of his business affairs, seeming to view Morocco as a captive market subject to his will.!

!

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 6

nature of this self-perpetuating predation translates into a peculiar blindness at the precise moment where History is witnessing dynamic change in the Arab world. 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 Morocco the demonstrations that took place during that time throughout the country placed blame squarely on the two closest advisors of the king and the strategists behind his control over the economy and politics of the kingdom.!

!

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. In addition, the announcement in Forbes magazine (2009) that allegedly revealed the royal fortune made the king's close associates extremely nervous. 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. The reason: publication of a national poll to determine what Moroccans thought of their sovereign. 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. The spokesman for the government and the Minister of Culture relied on a peremptory formula: "The monarchy cannot enter into the equation." Perhaps not "into the equation," but certainly into the figures, thus provoking concern sweeping over the men trying to take charge of the operation. !

!

The basic operating principle of Morocco is fostered by the system itself: everyone who holds the slightest bit of power is a sycophant struggling mightily to protect the king in order to better protect himself. Le Monde, which published the results of the poll, was banned two days later in Morocco. The Moroccan authorities then did it again by prohibiting the edition of October 22, 2009. That particular day, a 7

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

drawing by Plantu was published showing an individual wearing a crown, with what looked like a clown's nose, and sticking out his tongue. The caption said "Trial in Morocco against the caricaturist Khalid Gueddar who dared to draw the Moroccan royal family" (Le Monde, October 22, 2009).3!

!

From then on, views were heard  throughout the Arab world -- an annoying outburst that upset the strategy and complicated the objectives of the leaders at the helm, Except for Morocco, where, unruffled, the king and his underlings continued to engage in predatory activity.!

!

"Makhzen" is the word which designates the governmental mechanism surrounding the sovereign. Its characteristics include a blind obedience to the monarch's orders and a frantic desire to satisfy the needs which only a place in the heart of the hierarchy can satisfy. 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. This is how the Moroccan sovereign and his close advisors practice a debased form of power that is, in fact, permanent abuse.!

! ! ! II. When the Monarchy Lives at the Expense of its Subjects! !

The annual revenue per capita in Morocco is $4950, or about half of what is earned by Tunisians and Algerians.4 Yet, this impoverished country headed by a weak government is a source of immeasurable satisfaction for the king. By bestowing upon himself the largest slice 3 Le Monde, October 22, 2009. 4 World Bank, 2009. List of income per capita.

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 one: the sovereign and his family pay no income tax. 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.! The first Constitution, detailed by Hassan II in 1962, discreetly mentions that "the king maintains at his disposal a "civil list" -- those civilians (including the royal family in this case), to whom money is paid by the government." 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. If one lumps together without distinction all political groups, they voted in complete unanimity for the approval of the annual budget taken over by the monarchy. 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."5 ! Mohammed VI sets aside $40,000 for himself as a royal monthly salary in every sense of the word, since it is twice the amount paid the American and French presidents. 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.6 This all occurs without so much as a word about the apportionment of these payments among them. 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. The generosity of the Moroccan taxpayer, supplementing the overall contribution, is thus used to finance the king's own contributions. Under 5 Driss Ksikes and Khalid Tritki, “Enquête. Le Salaire du roi,” Tel Quel, no. 156-157. 6 Ibid.

9

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

the heading "Subsidies of the King and the Court" 7 $39,980,700 are in effect handed over to the sovereign in order for him to redistribute them, however he chooses, in the form of gifts and subsidies.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. In the palace courtyard, flooded with sunlight, where these dignitaries mingled, they formed a shadowy mass, distinct from all else around them. 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. Obviously honored to be among the "chosen," they impatiently await the moment when they could finally kneel down before the king and kiss his hand. Yet, this special group was as prudent as it was vain. Nothing could ever persuade them to give up their privileges, but it was loathe to get involved in defense of the king. ! Each attack against Hassan II found them silent, uneasy, almost as if absent from the scene. The only one who defended the king of Morocco with courage was Jacques Chancel. 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.! !

! !

7 Ibid.

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.8 Of these 12 palaces, the present king, just like his father, lives only in three or four of them, and many of the others have never even been visited. But it is not important since they are all maintained with equally attentive care. Gardeners, housekeepers, cooks are kept busy in each of them as if the king might show up at any moment, even if they know that he is visiting the opposite end of Morocco or in a foreign country.! The employees hired by the palace come at a cost of about $70 million from the governmental budget. A pyramidal scheme is structured from the most insignificant of the king's servants all the way up to the top, consisting of a royal cabinet (300 permanent employees), a secretarial staff working solely for the king, a military cabinet, a library, and a royal school, several clinics, and the maintenance of the mausoleum in which Mohammed V (the king's grandfather) and Hassan II are buried.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. During Hassan II's era, a visitor would not have been surprised to discover the number of Rolls Royces, Cadillacs, Bentleys and other high-end models perfectly lined up in the royal garages. 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. 9 Ibid.

11

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

possible.10 He is, in addition, a special client of Ferrari, from whom he purchases numerous models.! His clothing whims are equally costly for the national budget: $2,579,400 a year. His father was satisfied changing his outfit three times a day and the Parisian designer Smalto was the beneficiary of this indulgence. Mohammed VI, on the other hand, seems to have a particular taste for rare fabrics. He had a llama wool coat custommade by London tailors at a cost of 35,000 pounds sterling.11 And, in another domain, one million dollars is spent on the upkeep of animals living on the palace grounds.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 $49,008,600.13 Even if he posses several jets, it is a frequent occurrence that those planes from the Royal Air Maroc fleet (the national company) are requisitioned to transport the king, his following and his personal furnishings. 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.! In 2006, the price of one hour of flight-time just in a 747 Jumbo-jet belonging to Royal Air Maroc came in at $18,000. 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. Given the trips aver10 Neil Syson, “King flies Aston 1,300 miles to fix it,” The Sun, September 24, 2009. 11 “Le Roi de la sape,” Tel Quel, no. 361, February 20 - 27, 2009. 12 Ibid. 13 Fadoua Ghannam and Souleïman Bencheich, Tel Quel, no. 400, December 2008. 14 Nicolas Beau and Catherine Graciet, Quand le Maroc sera islamiste, Paris, La Découverte,

2006.

12

aging about three weeks in duration, and 60 hours of weekly flights, the bill exceeds three million dollars per excursion. An astronomical sum to which one must also add a daily cost of $1.8 million which represents the staff's accommodations.! From November 24 to December 7, 2004, Mohammed VI, accompanied by a delegation of 300 people, visited Mexico, Brazil, Peru, and Argentina.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. His official foreign trips are almost always followed by extended vacations. In Paris, he stays at one of his private homes or else at the Hotel Crillon, Place de la Concorde. In New York, he has a luxury pied-à-terre near Central Park.!

!

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. At the time of his arrival on the throne in 1961, Hassan II had only four palaces that were suitable to inhabit: the one in Casablanca, which would be enlarged and restored, those in Rabat and Ifrane on the slopes of the Middle Atlas, and, lastly, the royal residence of Dar Essalam, in the suburbs of Rabat. 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. Final cost, we are told: $160 million.! 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. A second palace, which would remain as little occupied 15 Fadoua Ghannam et Souleïman Bencheickh, “La Machine des déplacements royaux,” Tel

Quel, no. 400, December 2008.

13

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

as the first, was built in Agadir, then another in Erfoud. At the seaside, in Skhirat, Hassan II had a summer palace constructed, surrounded by an opulent garden and, at 40 kilometers from Rabat, a royal farm where he set up his stables: they housed the magnificent purebred Arabians, purchased throughout the world or presented as gifts from the king of Saudi Arabia, or even from Sheik Zayed, who presided over the Federation of the United Arab Emirates.! Hassan II assigned the implementation of these projects to the French architect André Paccard, whose fortune was assured before he fell into disgrace. But these architectural whims came at a considerable cost which Hassan II had no desire to subsidize. 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. It was a nimble and cynical sleight-of-hand. 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.! In order to protect the royal fortune still more, General El-Alaoui envisaged another strategy: recruit the essential personnel for staffing the palaces from among the personnel in various ministerial departments which would pay the salaries of the king's employees. 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. !

!

Financed and maintained by the State, the royal power dared to advance its interests still further, on the initiative of Abdelfattah Frej, the king's private secretary. 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. He lived in a superb villa situated in the residential section of Rabat, with a Hollywood-style pool that was 14

never used, but alongside of which he set up two immense refrigerators both filled with vintage champagne.! 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. But, by doing this, he opened up a veritable Pandora's box: this strategy, when applied on a scale the size of the royal palaces, was, in fact, exactly the same as the one Mohammed VI would apply 20 years later, proportional to the size of the entire country. The heir to the throne had sufficient time to observe the benefits of just such a system -- it would be astonishingly simple.! Frej headed the royal holding company by the name of Siger (an anagram for Regis, or king in Latin). The branches of this group were supposedly the exclusive suppliers to the palace and royal residences. Thus, the group Primarios became, and still remains today, the exclusive supplier of furnishings and interior decoration. 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. Those farms are among the most efficient and productive in the kingdom, and their products have priority for export, to the detriment of other Moroccan products. 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.!

!

In 2011, agriculture remains one of the main supports of the country's economy. 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. It could be a precursor of troubles."! In point of fact, he gave both equal priority -- a telling decision. One day, Hassan II decides to leave his palace in Ifrane, on the slopes of 15

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

the Atlas, and ride back to Rabat by car. On the mountain roads, the procession did not so much resemble an official convoy stretching out as a flagrant display of opulence. Hassan II, himself at the wheel of a Rolls Royce, changed to a Cadillac after a few dozen miles. More than 40 vehicles wind through the curving roads in this way, attracting a crowd of impoverished peasants, standing together, incredulous, on the hillside alongside the road. 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." We have arrived in the obfuscating land of lies. ! Every collaborator, the most subservient follower, knows that the king cannot stand a void or not being surrounded by his subjects. Orders are thus urgently transmitted to the prefectures, to all the relevant authorities, to summon the entire population, place them in the main streets of the villages where they would patiently await, often for hours, the brief passage of the convoy. 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 practiced eye of the sovereign could gauge in an instant how large or small the crowd was. 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.!

!

Drops of Rain Like So Many Bars of Gold! In the course of this excursion between Ifrane and Rabat, each passage through a local village produced the same ritual. 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.! Suddenly, on that particular day, a violent rainstorm began at the same time as he stretched out his arm in a gesture of love and solidarity with his "dear subjects" as he was wont to call them. 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. Which one of them would he choose? He got hold of the first one, without so much as a glance, settled down in an immense leather easy chair on which his coat of arms was engraved, and wiped his face. --”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. “Those were not raindrops that were falling, but actual bars of gold. The arrival of the rain is a prediction for a bountiful harvest and thus, we are joyous, there is peace in the land.”16! The royal Domains, irrigated and watered with great care, are not subject to weather changes. 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. This measure, which could have been viewed as generous, was not in fact applicable to most Moroccan peasants who lived on the bare minimum necessary to survive. But it did permit the royal Domains to increase profits by not paying any State taxes.! The arbitrary nature of royal decisions and acts, of which we are providing only a small sample, persists today in a country where the minimum salary, theoretically $257 a month, is often less than this, despite denials by trade unions.! A Moroccan engineer, Ahmed Benseddik, worked out a quick comparison, using official calculation.17 In 2009, Morocco's GNP attained $90 billion, and France's was $2,750 billion. 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. 17 Ahmed Bensedikk, “Le coût du roi au Maroc en 2010” (source for these figures comes from the

Law of Finances, 2010), www.lakome.com

17

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

off at 1,126 million euros. The amount allocated to Mohammed VI thus turns out to be twice as much as that received by the president of the French republic. 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. ! Another revealing comparison, that shows to what extent the future is uncertain in a country where, according to the UN, 51% of the population is under 25 years of age. 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 $322,425,000.18!

!

The country's deficiencies, the poverty of its inhabitants and the chronic underdevelopment in numerous areas offered a prime opportunity for royal activism during the early years of Mohammed VI's reign. ! 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." Just as in fairy-tales, pumpkins are changed into carriages, here the horses were long ago replaced by imposing royal processions, whose weighty and expensive logistics contrasts with the brevity of the time the king is actually involved hands-on. 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.! First, attention is given to the décor: local authorities repaint the facades of houses, repair broken sidewalks, plant flowers in the gar18 Ibid.

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." The ordinary people are, of course, unaware that the price of each royal trip is subsidized by the State. 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. When he decides to settle in for a few days in the main city of a region, local and national police assemble thousands of their men to surround the zone. 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. Convoys coming from the royal Palace in Rabat or Marrakech carry furniture, dishes, chefs and their equipment as well as the servants. Sometimes, meals are provided on the spot by Rahal, the king's personal chef. In every home occupied by Mohammed VI, the air-conditioning is set so that the temperature remains permanently at 59F.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. Thus, in keeping with this notion, following the inauguration of a brand new hospital equipped with the most up-to-date technology, in the south of the country, it would be closed down as soon as the king finished his visit. The medical equipment had not yet been ordered, and what the king had been shown was merely rented for the occasion.20! Mohammed VI shows compassion at little cost to himself. The royal fortune never contributes anything to help the destitute. These expensive trips throughout the kingdom, despite the government assuming their costs in full, have a perverse effect on the common people, who remain the main pillars of the monarchy. They are unaware, 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.

19

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

of course, that the king lives at the expense of that faded princess called the State, and figures that confronting the mismanagement and corruption of the political class and its elected officials, which is a reality, the monarchy represents their only recourse.! This is so, even if the real impact has yet to be felt. Thus, according to the experts of the World Bank, Morocco evolved at a faster rater during the final years of Hassan II, which ended in 1999, than during the 12 years of Mohammed VI's reign, in which the disparity between rich and poor did not stop increasing.!

! ! ! III. His Father’s Son! !

Mohammed VI has been reigning now for 12 years. It was a reign marked simultaneously by continuity and rupture with the 38 years that his father ruled the country. Hassan II devoted himself to building a monarchy sufficiently solid and respected as to control the institutions and the political scene -- an absolutism created with the same intransigence as Mohammed VI would display, but which seemed to be applied to different areas.! The royal absolutism of Hassan II was strictly political and its goal was to insure perpetuity of the Moroccan monarchy. The absolutism of Mohammed VI was effected in the economic realm, without the slightest political strategy to insure the future of the dynasty that he embodied.! ! 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. That also implies peering behind the scenes of a hidden universe: that of the Alawite dynasty.!

20

Proximity is often deceptive, since it gives the illusion of understanding. The French élite, on the right as well as the left, believe they understand this monarchy because it rules over a country only three hours flying time from Paris. Regularly invited to the palaces of Marrakech and Fez, this élite gets slanted stories from men who are supposedly close to the king. Yet, behind the high ochre walls that enclose the palace, there are the same intrigues and mysteries, carefully obscured, that have always preoccupied and were transmitted from one king to the next. Rumors are continually circulating, but never truth.! At the very beginning of his reign, Mohammed VI envisaged the possibility of opening up a number of his palaces to the public. The terrorist attacks in Casablanca in 2003 which resulted in 45 deaths, ended his good intentions. Like his father had done, he holed up inside his luxurious fortresses, filled with quiet servants moving through them like shadows. In this way, Mohammed VI began to don his father's cloak.! When the latter was asked what he would have liked to be had he not been king, he answered immediately: "A historian." 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. !

!

Morocco had been a Protectorate of France since 1912. 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. This was an episode that would leave an indelible memory on Hassan II. ! French authorities put one of his distant cousins, Mohammed Ben Arafa, on the throne of the deposed sultan. He was however, too lackluster to impress his subjects, and three years later, Paris had to accept the return of the sultan and the country's independence. Mo21

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

hammed V is the 21st descendant of the dynasty in power since 1659, whose members are supposedly descendants of the prophet Mohamet. Mohammed V becomes, however, the first king of the country in 1957.! The same year, he chooses his son, 29 years old, the regime's strong man, as his successor -- a decision inspired by both his son and his advisor, Mehdi Ben Barka. 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]. Forty years later, in a moment of confidential outpouring, he declared: "I passed the greatest part of my reign trying to reduce the number of uncertainties weighing on the crown." More precisely that meant "I imagined, thought, and constructed this monarchy in each of its components, so that it would be lasting and undisputed."! Under his leadership, royal power turns into absolute power since the king controls both the temporal and spiritual spheres. All his decisions are sacrosanct.! His taste for history leads him to the understanding that it is merely a subjective construct. Hassan II worshipped Alexandre Dumas, whose property he renovated with his own funds. The author had written: "History is a coat-rack on which I hang my own histories." 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."! Shortly after his arrival on the throne, he will turn away from modernity and work at "re-traditionalizing" the kingdom, by following, paradoxically, in the footsteps of the French colonizers. 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. Archivists and historians dug into old documents, following a move anticipated by the nationalists themselves, but with an opposite goal in mind -- they 22

did it in order to dredge up ancient protocols, described in detail by numerous foreign ambassadors and travelers. 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."21!

!

"Whoever Disobeys Me, Disobeys God."! 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 it, one sees the same organizing role of the army, the same sympathy for ancestral customs, the same respect shown for a popular Islam, the same suspicion with regard to urban outsiders, the same antipathy towards pan-Arabism and Wahhabism […], the same encouragement of apolitical quietism, the same indulgence with regard to wheeling and dealing."! In 1994, at a colloquium, Hassan pronounces a royal message containing one of the Prophet's hadiths: "Whoever obeys me, obeys God. Whoever disobeys me, disobeys 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. ! First comes allegiance (la Bey'a). 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. He transforms this unique set of circumstances into an annual rite in which each person must reaffirm his loyalty and obedience to the king.! The second pillar: he establishes, in the Constitution, an Article 19 that confers on him full powers as the "supreme representative." This is as much related to the spiritual realm as to the political one. He 21 Abdallah Laroui, Les Origines sociales et culturelles du nationalisme marocain,” Paris, La Dé-

couverte, 1977.

23

The Predator-King. 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. He sanctions the separation of the judicial, executive, and legislative powers, while at the same time creating a fourth branch, that which he implements and which takes priority over the others. ! 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.! Article 19 of the first Constitution, elaborated thus by Hassan II himself, mentions: "The king, Amir al-Mouminine, supreme representative of the Nation, symbol of its unity, guarantor of the permanence and continuity of the State, watches over the respect for Islam and for the Constitution. He is the protector of the rights and freedoms of its citizens, its social groups and communities. He guarantees the independence of the Nation and the territorial integrity of the kingdom in its recognized borders." 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. The king holds the upper hand in controlling executive power, naming the Prime Minister and the government who are responsible to him, presides over the Council of Ministers. In addition, he decides on the selection of judges, on the justification for specific projects, and the eventual possibility of the dissolution of Parliament. In point of fact, no nomination of any importance escapes his control.! 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.!

!

One autumn afternoon in 1996, while the rain was lashing against the roof-tiles, Hassan II, seated in one of the reception rooms of his stud24

farm, reveals a curious secret to me [Eric Laurent}: “In politics, as in life, you need luck. Take the case of my family, the Alawites. They emigrated from Saudi Arabia to settle in the Moroccan region of Tafilalet, without exercising influence of any particular kind.Then, one year, the harvests were destroyed by swarms of grasshoppers. Everyone is praying, throughout the whole country, discontent is growing, but nothing can be done, the grasshoppers return again the following season. So we go to consult my ancestors who descended from the Prophet, we ask them to take over. They assume power…" Hassan pauses briefly, his expression eager: "…and suddenly, right then and there, a stroke of luck, the grasshopper invasion stopped."22!

!

Punctilious, implacably watchful over the respect for and implementation of the prerogatives that he himself instituted, he becomes the puppeteer pulling the strings. One day, at the Ifrane palace, about 20 people were waiting in one of the reception rooms, all wearing dark suits. A few were talking among themselves, but most were waiting patiently. not moving. It was 2 in the afternoon. Then suddenly, like a flight of birds, the group broke up and made for the terrace where they lined up in silence. Hassan II was getting up, his right hand extended, and each courtesan moved forward, one after the other, to kiss it in reverence. He noticed me. "Ah, you've arrived, we're going on a drive. You'll get in alongside of me."! He turned around, his glance taking in the petrified members of the Court, and abruptly he pointed to three people of them. "You, however, will get in the rear seat. You are slightly overweight, but try to squeeze in."! We found ourselves in one of the royal Domains. Hassan had built a fish hatchery and decided, that very day, to fish for trout at the edge of a man-made lake. Shaking, a servant brought him several fishing rods. After five casts, he issued an order to the servant: "Bring me the 22 Interview with Eric Laurent, Bouznika, 1996.

25

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

black fishing rod." Another vain attempt to land a trout, then I heard him murmur: "Ah. they don't want to obey me!"23! ! Ten days later, the palace in Marrakech. The immense reception room alongside his office is filled with about 15 seated generals, all as motionless as lead soldiers. Hassan's relationship with his army is marked by mistrust ever since the two military coups d'état attempted against him. All of a sudden, the door opens, he bursts in like a mischievous imp and approaches a man about 50 years old, who had an awkward look to him, and a thick mustache across his face. 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." The man gets down on his knees and kisses the king's hand. Hassan II calls out to those accompanying him: "I will see you later."24 Two hours afterwards, they are still in the same spot, but now they are standing in the dark. 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. When it is brief, that is when it does not exceed two hours, it is obvious that the guest in question benefits from being in the king's favor. 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. If the wait exceeds this, the man is relegated to the back-room of disgrace. ! 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. No one could escape being treated this way, not even the crown prince.! 23 Remarks obtained by Eric Laurent, Ifrane, 1992. 24 Remarks obtained by Eric Laurent, Marrakech, 1992.

26

We are at the palace in Rabat, and it was slightly past 1 pm. An expressionless Hassan II, followed by several advisors carrying hefty ministers’ portfolios under their arms, crammed into his office. 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. It was the future Mohammed VI. Four hours later, the crown prince was still standing at attention, in the same place. His father had not deigned to receive him.!

!

"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. During this period, the future of the monarchy was far from assured.! 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. Mohammed VI's first cousin, Prince Moulay Hicham, refers to the corporal punishments of Hassan II in these terms: "One day," he recounts, "the king realized that his servants were being very gentle with his son and myself. He said to them: 'What you've been subjected to were not screams of pain, merely a show for the audience.' And he began to hit us: 20 lashes with a whip."25! The crown prince did not seem to have been the favorite child of his father. He was a rather open and jovial young man, who was extremely polite -- qualities which appear to have disappeared since he took the throne.! ! In 1998, Hassan II was ill, avoiding even those associates closest to him, those court jesters who amused him up until then. He lived 25 Ignace Dalle, Hassan II, entre tradition et absolutisme, Paris, Fayard, 2011.

27

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

alone in his palace, withdrawn, and he realized that his successor, thanks to him, will have unprecedented power. Death, which obsesses him, permeates the palace. No doubt that, during this time, he feels a deep sense of helplessness in view of the omnipotence he would soon lose, and jealousy for the one who would inherit it. At that very moment, he is caught in his own trap. He swept away the tradition that enabled the Oulemas to choose the eldest son as the next sovereign in order to impose his own will. And, out of concern for the stability of the monarchy, he reluctantly followed through on the choice he had made.! During these moments, since he had very little time left, he uttered more and more small secrets and sound-bites. 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."26! He pronounced this with incredible violence and, without flinching, he watched me taking notes but did not ask me to tone it down.!

!

The all-powerful politics that Hassan II will bequeath to his successor is reinforced by already significant economic and financial leverage. From the beginning of the 1980s, he ordered easing of controls on the economy and initiated a program of privatization.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." That was easy to figure out.!

26 Remarks obtained by Eric Laurent, Rabat, 1998.

28

The king buys back these public enterprises through the ONA (Omnium Nord-Africain, that he had acquired in 1980 and which regrouped the totality of the assets held by Paribas in Morocco). 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. The royal holding company thus is in charge of dozens of subsidiaries. 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. The ONA assumed the role of locomotive."27 However, the main purpose of the group's directors, who were all accomplished brokers, is to please the sovereign while maximizing profits. They know that the future of their job depends on it. Between 1981 and 1985, the ONA increases by seven-fold its revenues. 72% of the volume of activity occurs in the agricultural sector.28! It is easy to understand why. For this group, which houses 43 companies in Morocco and indirectly controls 86 others, food products represent an enormous market producing huge profits. 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. And there again, the Moroccan State is brought to its knees under the weight of tax levies: the subsidized sector, as it is set up in Morocco, targets the State budget in order to finance the royal businesses and guarantee them record profits. This system of subsidies, officially called a Compensation 27 Fahd Iraqi, “Il était une fois l’ONA,” Tel Quel, no. 456. 28 Ibid.

29

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

Fund, intended to avoid social upheaval, contributes, above and beyond anything else, to increasing the king's wealth.! The strategy of the ONA reflects the psychology of Hassan II: eliminate any and all opposition to his wishes. Shortly thereafter, he will name his son-in-law, Fouad Filali, to lead the group. All potential rivals of the ONA are systematically eliminated, regardless of the area of their commercial activity.! 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. Hassan II will at least have been nimble enough to accept, alongside the ONA, a limited private sector in which businessmen were still able to operate. This is no longer the case today, in the framework of the control strategy put into place by his successor.!

!

Hassan II, exceedingly pro-active, decided who would be the key players on the public stage. The same man who had plotted the shape the monarchy would assume, does the same thing with political life. "I was on the road, driving," he explains, "when I said to myself: it would be good if there were a communist party included in the gamut of political parties. 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."29 He expressed deep contempt for a political class that he expected to do his bidding and whose representatives were selected for their submissiveness. 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."! He adored pulling the strings, playing at being the puppeteer One evening, when it was slightly past 10 p.m., we were discussing different things in his palace at Skhirat, 30 kilometers from Rabat. Sudden29 Interview with Eric Laurent, Skhirat, 1993.

30

ly, he slipped this into the conversation: "Ah yes, I've prepared a little surprise for you. I organized a dinner with the Prime Minister and the leaders of the more important political parties." I answered, taken aback: "Thank you, your Majesty. What day?" He was literally gloating. "Now, they're already waiting for you!" Since I was getting ready to leave, with a wave of his hand, he ordered me to stay there. "There's no urgency, don't worry."! It is 12:45 a.m. when he finally lets me leave the palace and 1:30 a.m. when I get to where the dinner was being held. I push open the door, I discover old men dozing off in their armchairs. I say to the Prime Minister, Karim Lamrani: "I apologize for being late." "No problem," he responds rubbing his eyes to wake himself up, "We were having a discussion while awaiting your arrival."30!

!

A Legal Absolutism! Yet, the often flagrant mediocrity of some of these men is exasperating. 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. "Did you watch the televised debates yesterday?" he asks me."No? Well, you did the right thing. They were worthless. 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. "How are things going with my father?" "Rather well, thank you." He leans towards me, smiling. "Still, you should be on your guard, he's a real manipulator."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. Hassan II con30 Remarks obtained by Eric Laurent, Rabat, 1993. 31 Remarks obtained by Eric Laurent, Bouznika, 1994.

31

The Predator-King. 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. A legalized absolutism based on constitutional texts devoted to questions of traditional and divine right (allegiance, commander of the faithful). The rights of the sovereign are thus regarded as "inviolable and sacrosanct."! ! All the strategies put into place by Hassan II are scrupulously followed by the crown prince, but behind every one of his choices, there is an ulterior motive. "The pride of my regime," affirmed Hassan II, "are the dams that I had constructed throughout the country." In total, 120 large dams would be built during his reign, and at a steady clip. In certain years, 40% of the State budget would be allocated to these projects. He turned the dams into a political tool for the king that masked an actual siphoning off assets. It is he alone who selects the areas where the dams will be constructed and decides the number of acres that will be irrigated. The process of expropriation will be the opportunity to transfer numerous pieces of high-value real estate into the royal fold. ! In a country where three quarters of agricultural enterprises have less than 12.3 acres, land ownership allows the king not only the possibility of increasing his wealth, but also to make use of an efficient system of corruption. 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. "In 1956, we were able to identify a little over 2,471,000 acres We know that, out of this total, 803,092 acres of officially colonized land were recovered in 1963 and distributed in accordance with the agricultural reform that was enacted from 1963 to 1975, as individual 12.3 acre lots, notably during periods of social tension when Hassan II was trying to calm the population. There then were some 494,000 to 618,000 32

acres that were recovered at the beginning of the 1970s, during the implementation of what was called "moroccanization" and entrusted to two government agencies, the Sodea, specialized in cultivated farms, and the Sogeta, specialized in barren lands.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. Did the royal family derive benefits from this arrangement? If so, to what extent? Fifty-six years after Independence of the kingdom, the mystery remains. It is a sensitive subject in an agricultural country where the slightest implication of royal confiscation could have vast political and social consequences.! ! The final legacy of Hassan II, used with far fewer misgivings by his successor, was the call for international aid to finance projects with which the royal family was often involved. 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. ! In 1992, Hassan II is received in Paris by François Mitterand and Jacques Chirac, due to the power-sharing after that year's elections. Since 1990, French funding is as much as one billion francs, a figure which doubles after 1995. Thus France is Morocco's foremost creditor, and holds 13% of the debt, a percentage that climbs to 19% in 1999. 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. A subsidiary of the French development agency, Proparco, whose Moroccan offices are set up in Casablanca, also contributes its own funds and loans to companies as well as to Moroccan banks.! 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.

33

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

belongs to the king, for the exploitation of a gold mine southeast of Agadir.33 It also invests, at the same time, in aeolien (windmills) energy controlled by the king. 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 Moroccan monarchy has calmly prospered in the shadow of French omertà. 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. "Do not disapprove of what is unacceptable" seemed to be Paris' golden rule for the longest time. Thus, protected from critics and outside pressure, the king and his entourage were able to indulge in every excess without running any risk.! Stalin, it is said, confided one day: "Give me a man and I will create a trial." Hassan II could have stated a paraphrase of that: "Give me a man and I will create a sycophant." The pitiful spectacle of famous French personalities rushing in throngs to the king's receptions was painful to watch. Every year, on December 31st, the king organized an immense party for the New Year. Hundreds of official cars dropped off the invited guests, all smiles, in front of the illuminated palace gates. 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. Men and women in evening dress filling their dishes to the brim with caviar, in much the same way as many starving Thénardiers [characters from Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables] threw themselves on a bowl of soup. ! 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. Hassan 33 L’Economiste, September 5, 2001.

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. Without a doubt, he was consoled in his skepticism with regard to human nature and the disdain he felt towards most people.!

IV.

! ! ! The Monarchy of Connection And Corruption !

For his first official foreign visit, Mohammed VI, not surprisingly, chooses France. 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. What is at stake is important for a young monarch: he was concerned with emphasizing the break from his father whose reign was sullied by serious human rights abuses, and also of winning over French public opinion.! 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. Several media were also present. People willingly went out of their way to chat with the new king of Morocco. The meeting unfolded in an atmosphere of good humor and mutual confidence. Initially scheduled to last about 15 minutes, it would not end until two hours of casual conversation had passed.! Won over, Jean-Marie Cavada braced himself at that point to approach Fouad Ali El Himma, a childhood friend of Mohammed VI and delegated Minister of the Interior, and inquire as to why he did not consider organizing a press conference or a full and proper interview. 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."!

35

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

This reply was staggering and did nothing but feed the rumors about Mohammed VI's limited intellectual baggage. It also revealed a major change at the heart of the Court. 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. Yet this excommunist turned advisor to the Alawite monarchy since 1991 had moved in the direction of reform during the the last two years of Hassan II's reign. 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.!

!

The Witch-Hunt! During the months that follow the accession to the throne by Mohammed VI, the priority of the new resident of the Palace is to get rid of the Hassanian witches. Honors go to the most despised among them: Driss Basri, the feared Minister of the Interior under Hassan II for almost three decades.! "Big honcho, the one who did all the dirty work, symbol of the years of lead"…there is no shortage of epithets to describe that small obsequious man with the predatory smile, his face tanned from the long spells on the golf course following obediently on the heels of the king. These epithets are, for the most part, justified. ! Driss Basri was involved in a number of dossiers relating to politics and security in the kingdom, not to speak of the private lives of the royal family on whom he willingly spied for the benefit of His Majesty. He would pay dearly for that.! As candidly recounted, in the mid-2000s, by Prince Moulay Hicham, the cousin detested by Mohammed VI and third in line to the throne, Driss Basri felt the tides turning the day that Hassan II was buried: "I found him closed off in a room, squeezed in between two generals, one of whom was General Hosni Benslimane, the head of the royal

36

gendarmerie, who prevented him from going out of that room and intimidated him."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. Driss Basri was officially removed from his functions on November 9, 1999.! 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. Might Basri have carried official secrets away with him? We will probably never know. He will spend the remaining years of his life, with bitterness, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. Aside from his sons, he regularly welcomed a few journalists to whom he willingly unleashed his resentment of Mohammed VI and his entourage.! Although he threatened to publish his Memoirs on numerous occasions, Basri never took that step, as others before him had not. Yet his name darkened many pages. He passed away on August 27, 2007, at 68 years of age and was buried in Morocco 48 hours later. The faithful servant who had followed him into exile and was his Man Friday would be, sadly, left on his own and penniless, somewhere in France.! Hassan II's other security pillar met a better fate. We are referring to Mohamed Médiouri, responsible for security in Hassan II's palace. 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." 35Following the example set by Basri, he became a little too interested 34 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, 2006. 35 Hassan Hamdani et Mehdi Sekkouri Alaoui, “Le Jour où Hassan II est mort,” TelQuel, no. 402,

December 2010.

37

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

in the people the crown prince frequented and, a deciding factor for his fate, he had married Mohammed VI's mother, who was Hassan II's ex-wife, Latifa.! 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 first was an officer in the gendarmerie who was the same age as the future Mohammed VI, Moulay Abderrahmane, and who died in a mysterious car accident. The second was a Pakistani woman, Myriam who had married an American convert to Islam. Protected by the crown prince, she worried the information services: her husband showed bad taste in spending too much time at the US Embassy in Morocco, and even worse, keeping a private diary. 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."! Another key figure in Hassan II's reign will also be cast aside without delay: Abdelfattah Frej, the king's ex-private secretary and treasurer, who, under this title, watched over and managed the royal fortune and knew all its secrets...!

!

For the time being, the settling of scores had to remain secret. At the very least, discreet. 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.! Those who communicated information about His Majesty were hard at work and could not say enough to praise the style of a ruler who had a simple life-style and was full of empathy for the poorest among his subjects. The reality, of course, is an entirely different affair. Actu36 Jean-Pierre Tuquoi, Le Dernier Roi, Paris, Grasset, 2001.

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….in modern times. 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. Ferrari, Aston Martin, Maybach…He has the pick of them all. 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. This is still an ongoing practice.!

!

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. It was a break with the high-flown style of Hassan II's reign.! Who are these young people? They are either childhood friends, or guests at the evening parties thrown by the crown prince.! "Considering his difficult childhood and strained relations with his father to which must be added the fact that his mother took off with another man, Mohammed VI is not at ease. And he does not want to be judged. You have to take him as he is, and any critics that may be around him are not welcome. 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. His Majesty's pals came up through two distinctly different networks.! The first one, which was the best-known, was from the royal College, founded in 1942, under the French protectorate.38 At the time, the sultan Mohammed V wished to bestow upon his son, the future Hassan II, an education that was both traditional and western. When 37 Interview with one of the authors, Casablanca, September 2011. 38 Majdoulein El-Atouabi and Karim Boukhari, “La Jeunesse d’un roi,” TelQuel, no. 304, Decem-

ber 29, 2007 - January 11, 2008.

39

The Predator-King. 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. Aside from scholastic excellence, the second criterium for selection of these children was the respectability of their families, whose past history had been thoroughly dissected by the information services. It was unthinkable that the future king be accompanied, in his schooling, by the sons of unsavory individuals.! ! Once in power, Mohammed VI will cut out a solid reputation for himself, among his peers, as a lazy king because of his extended vacations abroad and his repeated absence from high-level international summit meeting. The fact remains that an iron-clad discipline had been imposed on him during his early years in school.39 Up every day at 6 a.m., an hour-long obligatory recitation from the Coran before breakfast and, on average, 48 hours of course-work spread throughout the week. 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.! This change in orientation will have a major influence of the trajectory of the future king. 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. The nearest of the dearest: Mohamed Rochdi Chraïbi, originally from Ouarzazate, in the south of the kingdom, and Fouad Ali El Himma, who came from the region of Marrakech. Both were from modest families and well aware of the opportunity that had been offered them.! El Himma and Chraïbi carry on an unending competition in which their verbal jousting often spills over into violence. Exasperated by his rival, Chraïbi throws this out one day to the king, referring to El Him-

39 Ibid.

40

ma: "That guy is going to get you one of these days. 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. He then summarily "committed suicide" while his wife and six children were put into a secret prison.!

!

This quarrel and protective warning -- it supposedly had a long history behind it -- caused Chraïbi to be distanced from the Palace for some time. Nimbler and especially more adept at manipulating the king by setting up all kinds of subversive plots against his rivals, Fouad Ali El Himma finally succeeds in putting himself forward as the closest friend of Mohammed VI. 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. The careless man had made the error of spewing invective over a wire-tapped telephone line about the Parti d'Authenticité et Modernité, created entirely out of nothing by Mohammed VI and run by El Himma to go up against the islamists of the Parti de la Justice et Developpement.!

!

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. He could scarcely be said to have left a lasting impression on his old mentor, who was not particularly fond of him and said, from his exile in Paris, that El Himma "was not hard-working, and preferred instead to party with the crown prince."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.

41

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

tion Générale des Etudes et de la Documentation, which was essentially Moroccan external instruction).! Fouad Ali El Himma had, at the time, the reputation of being a lively young man. "In Rabat, the crown prince and his friends very often went to the fashionable night club, L'Amnésia. Fouad had an apartment above the establishment and the benefit of a private elevator. Thus, the future king and his cohorts were able to get into the VIP lounge without passing through the entrance for the general public. They left the place as if they were being shot out of a rocket," recalls the still bemused, former kingpin of L'Amnésia. 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. Buddies are for partying!"41!

!

Yet, shortly after Hassan II's death, El Himma was not in slightest bit deterred from plotting in the corridors on behalf of the future king. 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. Seduced, the press took the bait before rapidly realizing its blunder. 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. It was a jail term which, two years later, is commuted to ten years prohibition from exercising his profession as a reporter. This was a first for the international community.!

41 Soulei2man Bencheikh, “El Himma, le parti du roi,” Le Journal hebdomadaire, September

2007.

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 then, he had the good fortune of cutting a deplorable image in Moroccan public opinion, which accused him of being at the origin of the repressive and lowest political maneuvers of Mohammed VI's reign.! 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. One fierce and forceful struggle that took place should be noted, between him and Fadel Benaïch, who was close to the king.! But the life of those who surrounded the king danced to the rhythm of his whims, and El Himma himself did not avoid this. In 2005, he fell into disgrace for several months. 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. El Himma will accuse him of having spied on him in hotels where he stayed. The Court is a world of warmed-over hatred.!

!

…And The Monarchy of Rogues! As highly unpopular as Fouad Ali El Himma was, and to make things worse, he was preceded by a nasty reputation as a man without scruples, Mounir Majidi, Mohammed VI’s private secretary, managed the king's huge fortune. 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.! Born into the royal family, Naoufel was the son of Hassan II's younger sister, Lalla Nezha, dead at the age of 36 in a car accident, and of a politician who would become head of a political party and Prime Minister, Ahmed Osman. Their son was raised in the U.S., far 43

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

from the burdens of Morocco's power elite and he was convinced that he was the one who introduced the crown prince to board sports -notably jet-skiing (the future king will become so hooked on it that a Moroccan comic, prohibited from performing for 20 years, Bziz, bestowed upon him the perfect nickname of "His Majetski"!).! "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.42!

!

Mounir Majidi, described by his numerous critics as intellectually mediocre, did not have the reputation of being a loser. And it was precisely because of his good grades in school that he managed to infiltrate right to the very heart of the monarchy. It all happened when the young Majidi was in class of Commission Mixte Internationale (CMI) in a modest public school. 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. It would be a royal College of sorts, whose criteria for selection were also draconian in terms of scholarly performance.! Ahmed Osman was a creation of Hassan II, who was singly responsible for crafting his political career. He was one of the faithful, but also a zealous courtier to the king: that decision to create an imitation royal College testifies as much to cheap copying as to the recognition that Osman felt for the man to whom he owed everything. Successful in his role-casting, Mounir Majidi thus is soon asked to leave the family home and move in with the Osmans.43 This uprooting will completely disrupt his life.! 42 Interview with one of the authors, Casablanca, July 2011. 43 Fahd Iraqi and Hassan Hamdani, “Qui est vraiment Mounir Majidi?” TelQuel, no. 323, May 10 -

16, 2008.

44

Naoufel, the same age as his cousin, the crown prince. often invites him over, and it is in this way that the future Mohammed VI lands up with his clique from the royal College. From the first contacts with the future king, Mounir Majidi, a timid person, remains withdrawn. 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. He then makes contact again with the crown prince's entourage and begins to actively join in the same party scene as earlier described -- to the point where the future king appoints him as private secretary beginning in 2000.!

!

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. Bernoussi was a young man whose lineage descended from one of the leading families of Rabat. "Hassan was the most loyal among all of those surrounding Mohammed VI during the time he was crown prince. But, in order for the future monarch, when he ascended the throne, to get rid of Bernoussi, his rivals in the new king's entourage would make it appear that he was at the center of a French scheme to get its hands on some of the wealth in the Moroccan economy."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….In the end, it was Mounir Majidi who would gain that highly coveted position after his rival had fallen from grace.!

! ! !

44 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, November 2011.

45

The Predator-King. 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. "I would even say that he owed his rise to power to the gradual development of this function serving Mohammed VI. 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. Mohammed VI, who had no confidence in his administration, regularly requested his personal secretary to invite such and such a personality from the Persian Gulf.”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. "He has no mail box, never sends an SMS even if he receives them, leaves no written messages," emphasized another person who knew what he was talking about.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. The relationship that tied him to the king was made up of mutual dependency.!

!

Fouad Ali El Himma and the group from the royal College, Mounir and those in Naoufel's clique….By the beginning of the new century, His Majesty's old boys' network held all the key positions in the kingdom, except those that were specifically military.! 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. That was the case of 45 Interview with one of the authors, Rabat, July 2011. 46 Interview with the authors, Casablanca, September 2011.

46

Nawab,47 who also did not wish his identity to be revealed, but who will, very early on, ring the alarm. For him "it was only a relative success for those revelers who spent their lives partying […], but who had absolutely no experience in government. Whether it be good or bad, they had no idea of what constituted the implementation of power. Their success, however relative it might be, went to their head, unfortunately and they believed that they had won the fight. This regime trying to find itself, was unable to advance towards any fundamental, authentic and definitive change." A prescient analysis.!

! ! !

V. 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. Indeed, not doing well at all. 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.48 Then, in the two years that followed, the ONA suffered from the disastrous strategy of Mourad Chérif who, from 1999 to 2002, ran it in his capacity as PDG. ! 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. 48 Ali Amar and Fedoua Tounassi, “La alaouisation de l’économie,” Le Journal hebdomadaire,

October 7 - 13, 2006. 49 Nicolas Beau and Catherine Graciet, op. cit.

47

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

powerful, odious with the weak. 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. But the most serious breach is not that. Mourad Chérif was fixated on a business vision he has in mind for the group he directed.! So as not to miss getting on board the multinational train, he says, he has to formalize privileged partnerships with the major multi-national corporations at whatever the cost. The alliances forged by Hassan II with the cement manufacturer Lafarge and with Danon were productive ones. Thus, Mourad Chérif looks toward France, the most loyal of allies in the Alawite kingdom, and decides that French groups will be systematically privileged. 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.!

!

This strategy of according priority to France had been at the initiative of Hassan II's advisor, André Azoulay, who applied it to the benefit of the hotel group Accor, or again to the group Publicis. Mourad Chérif was thus not innovating anything new in this field, but proved particularly adept at protecting French interests in Morocco. ! First of all, he rushed to sell the insurance group AXA, one of the shining stars of the ONA, the African insurance branch, under the most ludicrous of terms: he began by bargaining off a minority shareholders' statute on behalf of the ONA, before agreeing to sell the whole thing for a price that experts considered well below the amount for which it should have been sold.! 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. In a parallel fashion, the director of the ONA jumps into a series of risky acquisitions: the small cracker factory Bimo, for which the royal holding company spends $51,328,600 to gain control, at great expense, of a PME specialized in specialty 48

cookies and peanuts50…The results are not long in coming. The stock prices for the ONA fell by 40% and the holding company folds under a record debt. Mourad Cherif will be not be relieved of his functions until 2002.!

!

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. The heads of industry were supposedly not investing enough in the kingdom: "We were at a deadlock," admits the consultant who was working to unblock the situation on behalf of the Moroccan authorities. But you must also understand the management’s position. During the course of the last few years, the State had incurred a very heavy debt load vis-à-vis some businesses, to the extent of causing bankruptcy among several of them.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. "Switzerland thus became, temporarily, the second largest foreign investor in the country," the consultant stated ironically.!

!

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. In order to more efficiently lead the business leaders back into the fold, they flagrantly exploited a deceptive argument: management attempted to withhold their investments, in the form of a strike, since they had no confidence in the new king. "It's not true" one of them objected. Our hesitation can be explained by the less than satisfactory economic 50 Ibid. 51 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, October 2011.

49

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

outlook in which profit-making potential was seen as weak. During those years, there was never a strike of investors in the business sector."52! This manipulation did not come about by chance. In the beginning of Mohammed VI's reign, major changes were being planned in the wings in order to gain better control over the royal fortune. 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. As soon as March 2000, the king named Driss Jettou to the head of the ONA. 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.! Unlike the young executives, arrogant and armed with multiple university degrees, who clustered around Mounir Majidi, Jettou was neither a technocrat nor a management specialist from one of the prestigious schools. He maintained his career as head of a shoe manufacturing company and accrued political powers without acquiring the reputation of a wheeler-dealer. Not yet, in any case. In succession, first as Minister of Commerce and Industry, then as Minister of Finances, Jettou was generally regarded as competent. And, when he became "official representative of the interests of the royal family within the confines of the ONA," it was only natural that the press, upon orders, obsequiously called him the "faithful servant of the Alawite throne."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. The unofficial objective: make a lot of money for the king and his family.! 52 Interview with the authors, Casablanca, September 2011. 53 Abdellah Chankou, “Driss Jettou, la force de l’engagement,” MarocHebdo international, March

31, 2000.

50

The task would prove difficult. "When Jettrou assumed his duties, he found the royal institutions in a sorry state, strewn with social conflicts, explained the Moroccan economist Fouad Abdelmoumni. Certain managers were not paying out salaries, and security forces would periodically intervene to calm those who objected. Despite this bleak setting, he estimated that what was needed was to dissolve the most obvious majority presence in the ONA and opt for smaller participation in more diverse sectors.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.!

!

Driss Jettou will not have the time to implement his strategy. One year later, in 2001, he is abruptly named Minster of the Interior. Does not the king impose his choices and whims on everyone concerned? Mounir Majidi succeeds Jettou. He believed that he had acquired the basics of the job managing the royal fortune through his contact with Jettou.! He is supported by a famous but unknown individual, Hassan Bouhemou, who in 2001, had been named to the head of the royal holding company Siger. 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 was a ruthless man, so it was said, and he intended to make a place for himself in the golden glow of the monarchy. 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. This man introduced him very 54 Interview with the authors, Rabat, September 2011.

51

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

quickly to the king's private secretary who was seeking "young and brilliant managers with patriotic underpinnings."55! In 2001, no one suspected the major role that Hassan Bouhemou would play in Mohammed VI's vast and predatory enterprise. He lost no time forming a strategic alliance with Majidi, with whom he will remain close, assuming the position of his intellectual power-broker.!

!

At the time, the duo Majidi-Bouhemou was confronted with a problem by the name of Driss Jettou. They are working in the shadows to create the first stage of the huge undertaking that would bleed the country dry, and which would occur, according to them, by means of a system of national champions. It was a strategy that put them at the exact opposite pole to what Driss Jettou had in mind.! In the Palace, the predominant idea was that a national champion had to be a leader in his field, had to assume the role of locomotive for other businesses and acts as a means of bringing individual sectors up to a level of excellence. 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….No serious competition would be tolerated, and all available means would be used to arrive at this end, including influence on the judiciary, already tainted by its reputation of not being independent.! 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.!

! ! !

55 Aïssa Amourag, MarocHebdo international, February 11, 2005.

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. In spring 2002, the socialist government, led by Abderrahmane Youssoufi, was demoralized by general disappointment. 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). Instead, at the last minute, he threw his lot in with his great old money manager, Driss Jettou.! 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. A well-connected man and courtesan trained in all the subtleties of the power elite (Makhzen), Driss Jettou was shrewd enough to have placed all his network connections at the disposal of Mohammed VI and to have cultivated the persona of an eternally submissive subject. It should be stated that the network connections previously noted had numerous ramifications. It was because of this that Jettou got along so famously with key generals in the Moroccan army, who formed the basic structure of the regime. 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. Agreeable to a fault, Driss Jettou was, in a way, the pivotal figure in the monarchy. 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.! His success began to irritate Fouad Ali El Himma right from the start, who used and abused his closeness with the monarch in order to manipulate the kingdom's political life. Whenever he sensed that a rival was moving up, El Himma seethed with jealousy towards that man. And he had it in for Jettou, who had successfully organized the legislative elections of 2002 when he was Interior Minister, then had gone on to set up a dynamic working process that surpassed the one 53

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

organized by El Himma, the monarch's old buddy. So then if, in addition, now Driss Jettou became the pet of management and foreign embassies…! El Himma unleashes a war without pity against the Prime Minister named by Mohammed VI. Jettou will nonetheless hold power until 2007, the date at which he is relieved of his duties. But at what cost!! During all those years in power, Jettou was undermined by El Himma. 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. Before being removed from his job, his adversaries, with El Himma at the head, but also with Mounir Majidi and Hassan Bouhemou, won a first victory against him: Mohammed VI was no longer speaking to his Prime Minister. He had just about stopped seeing him at all.! Certain issues, some of which were well-founded and others not, were hot topics in the media. 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. Other less credible affairs had to do with lands that were improperly acquired, alleged to have been simply royal gifts or else handed out by certain politicians.!

!

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. On May 16, 2003, five cells of suicide bombers blew themselves up in Casablanca, the economic capital of the kingdom, killing 45 people (of who 12 were the terrorists) and wounding about 100 more.!

56 Paul Héauduc, “Les gros sabots de Driss Jettou,” Bakchich, June 27, 2007.

54

The Jihadists had summarily targeted those places that they associated with "debauchery," with "zionism, or merely with "foreigners": a square in the medina, the Hotel Farah, La Casa de España, the Israelite Alliance club, and the Positano restaurant.! 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. Yet, all the suicide bombers were Moroccan and came from the same slums of tin shacks and muddy alleyways, known as Sidi Moumen. 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 Salafistes and preachers of hate found fertile ground in these locales.! The unbearable images of the wounded and the corpses deeply shocked Moroccan public opinion. The kingdom had just fallen into the era of islamist terrorism, from which it had been spared until now. But it was in appearance only. As was noted by the excellent journalist Ahmed Reda Benchemsi in an excellent piece57 published after the Casablanca attacks, for months prior to these suicide bombings, Morocco had been on several high-level terrorist alerts.! 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. Still more serious, nearly two months later, a sleeper cell of Al-Qaida, in which three Saudis had been identified, was dismantled. It intended to blow up an American naval vessel crossing through the Straits of Gibraltar. Finally, in March 2003, an attack planned for the cinema complex Megarama in Casablanca had been discovered. Massive bloodshed had just barely been prevented.!

57 Ahmed Réda Benchemsi, “Comment nous en sommes arrivés là,” TelQuel, no. 176.

55

The Predator-King. 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. And yet.....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. Then, at the very beginning of the new century, the Moroccan Islamic combat group, better known by the initials GICM, was born in Afghanistan with the creation of a training camp for jihadists who were arriving from the kingdom.!

!

"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.! A source from the French secret service of the DGSE (Direction générale des sociétés d'Etat) who was spying on the king's friend, released an extremely informative note sent to the officer in charge. 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."! Later it would become obvious that El Himma took after the hawk rather than the dove and, relevant to the most important leaders of Moroccan Islamism, he indulged in a few threats: "We will go directly into action, in accordance with the logic of an eye for an eye. They are pressuring us to go back to Oufkir's time." What was implicit in this statement was, simply put, the elimination of the islamists. 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. He goes on to say, reinforcing this notion, that "the financing of both large and small groups, comes first and foremost from the Gulf states, from contraband through Spain and drug 56

money." 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." Whatever the case may be, the data sheets from the DGSE show that, after the May 16 2003 attacks, the king's friend brings substantial influence to the constellation of security people gravitating around the monarch. 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.!

!

In 2002 already, Driss Basri, the ex-Minister of the Interior under Hassan II who was languishing in exile in Paris, predicted to agents from the DGSE in his home to take his testimony, that "the king would try to clean house shortly within the major institutions of the country, and notably the army and security services." But that he would "do it in stages, without rocking the boat."58 Despite the fact that he was in retirement, Basri had not made a mistake, particularly with regard to the fact that Mohammed VI would not be overtly hostile towards the highest-ranking members until February 2005.! 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.! Three months later, in May 2005, General Arroub, who enjoyed the reputation of an honest, upstanding man and who directed the 3rd Bureau of the army, was upset by the controversy tied to the opening of a museum dedicated to the glorious exploits of Marshal Méziane, a fervent supporter of the Spanish general Franco. 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.! 58 “Mohammed VI poursuit son ménage militaire,” Bakchich, March 6, 2007.

57

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

Finally, in September 2006, the Palace cast a spell on General Hamidou Laanigri, who already had to leave the DST after the 2003 Casablanca attacks and who filled the post of National Security director. 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.! By the end of 2006, when Mohammed VI and Fouad Ali El Himma finished taking back control over security, no one remained from the old regime except a single survivor: Generall Hosni Benslimane. 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. The Anti-French Conspiracy!

!

In Morocco, those young people who are both ambitious and unscrupulous dream of breaking into the makhzen. One observer called this system "voluntary slavery." In a world where all powers, whether executive, legislative, or judicial, are relegated to the role of mere bystanders, an ambitious person would naturally attempt to get closer to "Sidna," His Majesty. 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. The latter group will become the obvious victims targeted by the latest newcomer when he chooses to revenge himself for the same humiliations to which he was subject at the hands of the king.! Actually, Mohammed VI looks very little like the crown prince that he was. The courteous and reserved young man morphed into an au58

thoritarian, capricious ruler known for his excesses -- and in particular his violent fits of rage that often led him to physically assault against his closest collaborators.! 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. Thus, with the rise of Mohammed VI, in his wake the men of his generation also aspired to share the authority and reap its benefits. 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. But for them, winning the absolute confidence of the king implied allowing him to perceive a threat that they alone had identified and against which they were ready to fight.!

!

Artificially constructing a conspiracy from the ground up is often the best method of hiding the fact that there actually is one being plotted. In 2003, Mohammed VI gets a piece of startling news from his private secretary, the faithful Mounir Majidi: France took advantage of the beginning of the king's reign to mount a vast conspiracy whose objective was nothing less than to take control of the Moroccan economy. And notably the ONA. The so-called information was without basis, but it was taken seriously by Mohammed VI. 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.! All the more that, in this universe where plots intermingle and play out daily, written proof rarely exists and words often deal a lethal blow. 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. When his name was mentioned, the king was thunderstruck: Hassan Bernoussi, one of the most loyal in his entourage, devoted body and soul to him since he was crown prince.! 59

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

The courtesan-conspirators explained to the king that they were the first ones distraught at having to break the news of this sad betrayal to him. 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 was thus excluded from the closest royal circle, but in its incredible perversity, the system was set up in such a way as to assure his continuing inclusion, over the years, among those invited to attend ceremonies organized in the Palace. 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.!

!

"He gave everything to the French!"! All conspiracies pre-suppose a strategy and, in this specific case, witnesses are in agreement: the "French conspiracy" had not been conceived by the kings' private secretary, Mounir Majidi, but by a man who remained at his side constantly, ever since he had been recruited, Hassan Beouhemou, his "evil genie," say some.! 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." In point of fact, the man who conceived of the idea for the "French conspiracy" fiercely detested France, even though he was a product of the the republic's most prestigious universities. "An incredible hatred," according to one of those who was with him during those years. He recounted that, during those years he was a student, he had been humiliated, [and] a victim of racism."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. 59 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, November 2011.

60

From then on, the man is set up at the very center of royal power and knows every secret -- or nearly. Hassan Bouhemou and Mounir Majidi will then promote, for Moroccan popular consumption, their idea to create "national champions," a plan that was merely a reworking of the old discourse maintained by their predecessors at the head of the ONA, those responsible for the management of the king's fortune. A discourse of a somewhat shady nationalism whose only purpose was to hide the extent of royal predatory activity.!

!

From 2003 on, once the enemy has been clearly designated and the king placed under his influence, the two men go on the offensive. 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. Between 1999 and 2002, it is said that the head of the ONA, Mourad Cherif, had taken the initiative in signing partnerships with several major French groups, namely Axa and Auchan. 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….! The argument, moreover, was not entirely untrue. Cherif expressed unbounded admiration for the French capitalist system, becoming friendly with numerous major employers in France. He had opened wide the ONA doors to several firms, according to his collaborators, in order to "take advantage of their expertise and their know-how."! 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. Instead, they replaced this with a 5149 sharing in favor of the ONA, but Cherif had explained to the directorship of Auchan, if we believe one of his colleagues, that it was merely a formality and that the two organizations actually exercised

60 Fédoua Tounassi, Le Journal hebdomadaire, February 2007.

61

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

joint control.60 This was a mistake that Majidi was successful at turning into an act of negligence.! Management errors, in a universe like that of the Court and the Palace, are not always enough to bring down a man. Spiteful information and well-manipulated accusations are what most often deal fatal blows. Mourad Cherif was a haughty character who did not seem to understand that times had changed. 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.! In the eyes of Majidi and Bouhemou, Cherif was marked. But they still had to manufacture the event which would cause his certain demise.. It happened in 2002, on the occasion of a visit by the head of the ONA to the Republic of Guinea. That year, Cherif came to inaugurate a gold mining complex belonging to Managem, an affiliate of the royal holding company. He was warmly welcomed with opulent receptions held in that African country, and worthy of a head of state.! In so doing, he crossed the red line, kicking and screaming. On this African jaunt, Mounir Majidi gathered up whatever details might provoke the annoyance and, why not, the anger of the king. 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. Against this man who did not understand the need to remain in his hierarchical rank, the verdict was handed down without recourse: termination, but relocated as head of the OCP (Office chérifien des Phosphates).!

!

From 2005 on, the ONA goes after the French group Axa. A long confrontation between Majidi and Bouhemou follows, on one hand, and Claude Bébéar, the founding president of the Axa group, on the other. 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. In order to increase the pressure on Axa, the Moroccans unleash a fiscal control measure against them.! 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. The stock-holders’ agreements signed by Mourad Chérif were all favorable towards the interests of the French firms and, in the case of Axa, it was the French who were, in reality, responsible for running the new ensemble in which the ONA held only 49% interest.! 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. A well-placed source from Axa shared this at the time: " The ONA stabbed us in the back." In 2007, finally, the ONA leaves Axa Maroc, forcing the French group to buy back the totality of the royal shares.!

!

"They are astoundingly arrogant"! In 2006, Majidi engages in a tug of war with Auchan. 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. The ONA, by a simple majority vote, and contrary to the advice of its French partner, passed a resolution to increase the number of ONA members on the directorial board of Marjane and Acima from one to two. This was a decision that marginalized Auchan and challenged the protocol signed in 2000 that anticipated joint control and parity of the two enterprises. All attempts at reconciliation initiated by the French failed. 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.! 63

The Predator-King. 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."! Chrisophe Dubrulle, president of the Board at Auchan, made no attempt to hide his indignation: "This conclusion literally stuns us. 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. I am forced to conclude, as a result, that the protocols of international agreements signed by the ONA appear to have no validity in Morocco."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. An agreement which resulted in a comfortable increase in the value of this portion of the capital, to the tune of $421,731,900!

! !

Being thrown out in this manner, however, left the French with a bitter taste….and a free hand to royal strategists. The mass retail distribution business was undergoing the kind of growth rate that generated considerable profit. Until then, the general purchasing agency of Auchan supplied the mega-malls. Henceforth, it would be the affiliates of the ONA that supplied Marjane and Acima. It was a closedcircuit operation that reduced costs and increased profits. According to the ONA, the distribution affiliate represented 25% of its revenue, a genuine cash cow, and brought in more than 7 billion dirhams.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.leblogfinance.com, Jan-

uary 23, 2007. 62 Ibid.

64

opment of mass distribution was colossal: it represented, in 2006, only 8% of Moroccan food products, valued between 140 and 150 billion dirhams.63! The departure of Auchan also allowed the king and his two subordinates to impose new rules of the game behind closed doors. They had little to do with those that prevailed in the prevailing market economy. A man who witnessed these activities describes "this chain by which, insidiously, the government becomes the means of transmitting orders from the Palace and agreeing to grant public lands throughout the country, almost at no cost, to the Marjane supermarket group belonging to the king."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."!

!

Henceforth, if the French want to work with Morocco, they have to follow the new rules put in place by Mounir Majidi and Hassan Bouhemou. A man close to both of them confided: "They have an astounding arrogance. When they speak to the French, they are telling them, in essence 'You will do what we want and, in return, you support our position on the Western Sahara issue." This attitude created an enormous uneasiness in French economic milieux.! With a great deal of candor notwithstanding, the world of French business had seen Morocco as a definitively captive market. 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. In a world where French interests were increasingly disputed and contested, Morocco remained a deceptively calm haven of peace.! 63 Ibid. 64 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, November 2011.

65

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

Calling into question the positions taken by Auchan and Axa unleashed a genuine earthquake. The French Embassy in Rabat had to face the complaints of French businessmen, and some among them, introduced at the highest levels. brought their issues directly to the Elysée. 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. It was the Danon group, about to be thrown out of the Central dairy industry with which it had been associated. 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. Whatever the case, Jacques Chirac watched as Claude Bébéar of Axa, Christophe Dubrulle of Auchan, Franck Riboud of Danon filed into his office, one after the other, at the height of this tug-of-war imposed on them by the Moroccan government.!

!

The King Does Not Listen to Chirac! The French president was worried that these tensions would weigh heavily on relations between the two nations. He already knew that Mohammed VI was only half-listening to him, not paying close attention and frequently annoyed. 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.! She was no more listened to than Chirac. The king was determined to increase his profits and did not particularly want to share them with French groups. His intent was to move towards other partners who would be less strict about adhering to the protocols of formal agreements and the application of international norms. 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.! The banker Khalid Oudghiri, considered a virtuoso of Moroccan finances when he created the most powerful bank in the country (and belongs to the king), Attijariwafabank, prior to having falling victim to 66

the intrigues of the Palace, summed up the new hand that was dealt this way: "Mounir Majidi and Hassan Bouhemou are taking record profits and see themselves as businessmen. 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."65! The reality of the prince's power constitutes the reality of the country itself, and it is astonishing that a group like Auchan could have seriously believed that it would be the beneficiary of a fair judgment when the king's interests were at stake. If we are to believe Khalid Oudghiri: "Justice does not require orders, it anticipates them. The system is so defined by its servility that it operates on automatic pilot."!

!

François Mitterand, questioned as to his definition of power, replied: "True power, is to be able to name." And in Morocco there is no institution, no important job whose director is not named by the king: whether the chairman of management or of the bank association or the Moroccan soccer federation.! In truth, and this is what makes the power of his colleagues so exorbitant , the king names, but rarely makes the selection. He most often will approve the names that his closest advisors submit to him. 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.! At the heart of the royal holding company, Siger, whose home office is right near the palace in Rabat, Mounir Majidi and Hassan Bouhemou, from their opulent white marble offices, thus began to weave the multiple threads that tied them to those in their debt. And they had to be vigilant since the slightest casting error in this scenario could compromise the entire strategy.! 65 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, November 2011.

67

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

That was the case in 2002, with the nomination of Bassim Jaï Hokimi as head of the ONA. This technocrat with a degree from the American university Stanford, was upstanding enough but known for a lack of charisma. He lived in Paris and worked as a programmer. Those who met him at the time say that he was living in a modest apartment on a small salary. He decided at that point to return to Morocco and met Mounir Majidi.! Mohammed VI's secretary chose to name him to the head of Primarios, the enterprise that provided furnishings to the palace. Then things took off. After having ousted Mourad Chérif, the less than obliging manager of the ONA, Hokimi was viewed as the ideal successor. His candidacy was presented to the king, who accepted it without having ever met the man.! 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. It was a genuine communications strategy that Hokimi was, alas, really the last man to implement in a satisfactory manner.! 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. One phone call to Mounir Majidi and, 15 minutes later, he was at the palace, shrouded in shadows, enduring insults from Mohammed VI, who ended up by screaming "Fire him!."! This decision thrust Majidi and Bouhemou into a deep confusion. They had never envisaged a plan B, an alternative candidate to Hokimi. 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. But all that was necessary was to mention the name of a candidate and present it to the king with enough conviction for him to come down in favor of a man over whom he would have absolutely no control.! ! 68

It is in this way that their worst nightmare would become a reality. The newly promoted man was Saâd Bendidi, and he was, up until then, the director of the second largest telephone company in the kingdom, Méditel, after having been vice president of Finance.com, which belonged to the Moroccan billionaire Othman Benjelloun.! Bendidi was perhaps unaware that he was merely a pawn in the conflict which would play out between rival clans in order to gain the king's favor, but he could not ignore the fact that he had a mortal enemy in the person of Hassan Bouhemou. 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." Inexcusable comments for a man like Bouhemou, who neither pardoned nor forgot.! The two men needed three years of fierce undermining to finally crucify Saâd Bendidi. On April 11, 2008 at 5:00 pm, the administrative council of the ONA invited the president to hand in his resignation, throwing him under the bus with unexpected brutality, even in a world where an infinite number of fates were expeditiously sealed by a royal whim.! Bendidi was denied the right to the classic expression of gratitude, via a communiqué, for accomplishing his mission. On the contrary, the minutes contain very harsh words, a veritable itemization that clearly taxes him with incompetence. The pretext: among the hundred branches of the ONA, the one that revolved around the cell phone company, Wana, which had suffered substantial losses. Bendidi was flabbergasted: several months earlier, he had received a call from the king congratulating him on launching Wana…! In reality, Wana was a poorly conceived project, once again the fruit borne of the determination of Majidi and Bouhemou to satisfy Mohammed VI’s boundless appetite. In this case, it involved allowing him to gain a foothold in the rapidly growing sector of telecommunica69

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

tions, one of the rare areas that he did not already control. The company turned out to be a financial disaster, but it is always simpler to blame one's own errors on one's adversaries. Bendidi was thus sacrificed on the alter of efficiency, but apparently it was just a pretext.! 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. From 2002 on, through a financial sleight-of-hand suggested to him by the discrete Hokimi, who would be thrown out as director of the ONA, Majidi had also secured control over the royal holding company Siger.!

!

In 2003, the two royal "architects" announced a startling initiative indeed. The SNI, a holding company retaining the royal equities, became, despite its far more modest size, the parent financial holding company of the ONA, all the while retaining control over 60% of the king's core financial power, Siger -- a pyramid system that defied the laws of economic gravity. 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. Reducing debt, consolidation, and autonomy of the branches were the arguments used to justify this operation.! 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,….and business nature.!

!

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." ! This technical formula hides a far more sordid manipulation. 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. It was for one simple goal: to allow the king to solidify his financial control of the group. 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. A few among them went so far in their subservience as to immediately cut short their vacations in order to make sure that the operations were going as planned.! 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. And it is highly unlikely that these men and women, abandoned in such a way, appreciate the cynical rhetoric of those who dispossessed them of their retirement: "Our objective is to endow Morocco with an international class champion who can generate growth for all of us." The objective was, simply stated, to give Mohammed VI the financial maneuvering room he needed. The commentary of one of the financial managers leaves no room for doubt: "A true royal Public Offer to Buy that ignores social needs."66! The operation revealed, upon casual examination, that the independence of these funds was sheer fiction. Their managers are, moreover, named by royal decree or affiliated with the CDG (Caisse de Dépôt et de Gestion), a public organism entirely dependent on the Palace: its general director is named by the king and only accountable to him.! This organism is, moreover, the largest institutional investor in the country. As its head, the personal secretary of the king named a 66 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, December 2011.

71

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

friend and school buddy of Hassan Bouhemou, Anass Alami. He provided all the guarantees that he would behave as expected. No plan could be undertaken without the agreement of the king.!

!

Since Mohammed VI took power, the CDG has often been pressed into service for financial contribution to royal projects. Notably, this was the case when advisors in the know suggested to the king that he invest in Club Med, in order (according to them) to become a principal player in the tourism industry. 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.! At the service of the Palace, the CDG evaded all governmental controls. And yet these were public funds that were put into use and wiped out. In 2010, it was estimated that savings deposits reached 56,7 billion dirhams.! The CDG is often increasingly associated with major projects developed by SNI-ONA, the royal holding company, following the 2003 reforms. This represented a dual advantage. 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,.! Anticipating the king's wishes and satisfying them even before he formulated them, enables us to appreciate the cunning and virtuosity of a courtesan. Sparing the king from any confrontation was just as important. That is why it was critical that the ONA, this royal octopus, be financially endowed with great care. Recently. all Moroccan banks provided credit to the royal holding company, but alas! it had already reached the ceiling of maximum bank loans. The solution was rapidly found. The Palace required directors of the CDG to create a business bank, the FIPAR. It immediately obtained approval…in order to provide new credits to the ONA.!

!

72

! ! VII. 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.! The Moroccan career of Khalid Oudghiri lasted only five years, during which the "most influential banker of the kingdom," an epithet given him by the press, fell from the heights of power to disgrace, before he was seen as a guilty man.! 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. He joined the BNP-Paribas banking group in 1992, participated in the merger of the two establishments and gained recognition for his expertise. (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).! In 2002, Khalid Oudghiri is named head of the Middle and Near Eastern region of BNP-Paribas when he is approached by Mounir Majidi, the personal secretary to Mohammed VI, to take over the directorship of the BCM (Banque Commerciale du Maroc). Majidi had just dismissed the president of this bank belonging to the ONA. He hoped to recruit a "dream team," a group of competent men whom he would place at the head of the most important branches and whose management he himself would supervise. 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." To sum it up, he set all the rules of the game: "I am the boss and I have the king's confidence." For as long as anyone can 73

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

remember, Moroccan financial and political power was used to gravitating towards and submitting to orders that came from advisors backed by royal power.!

!

Yet the choice made by Oudghiri will prove to be an unwise one. The banker, then 44 years old, well aware of his value, and trained, as he liked to say, "in the school of the Republic," totally disregarded the codes and traditions of the makhzen, and those of the Court even more. The man was far from naïve but he did not yet realize that he was walking in the middle of a mine-field.! The ink on the contract had not yet dried when Mounir Majidi asked him to come to Marrakech to meet the king. The wait to see Mohammed VI was in vain. Majidi telephoned Oudghiri, embarrassed: "I'm sorry, His Majesty does not have the time." 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. This first circle, which gravitated around the king, constituted a kind of screen, or cocoon, protecting him from various realities. Beyond that, the world did not seem to hold much interest for him. And Oudghiri belonged to that world.! He pulled off record profits as head of the royal bank but never received an audience with the sovereign. It is true that the filter represented by that inner circle functioned in two directions: it protected the king and at the same time allowed close advisors to keep away any intruders wishing to get closer to 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."67 He confided that when he took over the job at the beginning of 2003, he was surprised by the lack of specific projects emerging from Hassan Bouhemou and 67 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, November 2011.

74

Mounir Majidi’s collaboration. The colleagues seemed to have run out of ideas.!

!

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. The BCM, under the direction of Oudghiri, merged with Wafabank, owned by the wealthy Kettani family. Negotiations took place in the greatest secrecy and even the Director of Wafabank was informed only a few minutes before the agreement was signed. The transaction were effected with Saâd Kettani, the eldest of the founder's beneficiaries. It was a wise choice. The man was more of a hedonist than a businessman. 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. It was the perfect means of controlling, de facto, Morocco's entire economy.! 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. ! Saâd Kettani, who thus negotiated the sale of the family business to the great advantage of the king, soon was named president elect of the national committee responsible for advancing Morocco's candidacy for the 2010 World Soccer Championship games, a position endowed with a substantial budget. 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.! Luxury trips by the Moroccan delegations, on the pretext of promoting their country's candidacy, were climaxed by a humiliating fiasco. Not that it mattered. Kettani returned to the scene as the high commissioner in charge of organizing the festivities in celebration of the 75

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

1200th anniversary of the city of Fez, complete with, once again, a significant budget at his disposal. ! He crisscrossed the world, handing out packets of bills without counting them, to members of his entourage. Completely at ease with public funds, he went so far as to misplace a small briefcase containing millions of euros. He made no effort to find them, stating in a bemused way: "Lhbar ou Ibaround man dar makhzen" or, loosely translated "It will be chalked up to the princess's expenses” [meaning it would be gratis].!

!

Saâd Kettani's whims are, in reality, a replica of the king's. At the head of the Committee to commemorate Fez’s1200th anniversary, he replaced Ahmed Benseddik, innocent victim of the royal temper tantrums. 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. His fate changed the day the king visited this thermal spa, situated near Fez. 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. In particular, he explained that the on-call physician did not have legal authorization to practice, and that a report which had gotten no response, pointed out that the main building, in a state of serious disrepair, ran the risk of collapsing, causing large numbers of victims since several thousand people passed through the spa daily.! 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. The king thanked him, took the magazine, and while the procession advanced, Benseddik, giddy with delight, was impressed by the way in which the king had listened to him.! 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."!

!

Benseddik, a fervent royalist, who came from a resistance family actively engaged during the French occupation, was crushed. He discovered the arbitrariness of royal power and soon experienced the closing of all kinds of doors in his face. After a long period of discouragement, he had the idea of organizing demonstrations to celebrate the 12 centuries since the city of Fez was founded, symbolizing the continuity of the Moroccan monarchy. 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. The sovereign had obviously forgotten about the unfortunate incident and even the name of his victim: he gave the order to set him up as the head of the committee. Benseddik lit up when he heard the news, believing that he had been rehabilitated and traveled to promote his project. It is certainly true, he thought, that one of the qualities of a great sovereign is to know when to bestow benevolence after having acted in a completely arbitrary manner.! Ahmed Benseddik - ingenuous man that he was, did not realize the scheme that was being plotted behind his back. Mounir Majidi, the king's personal secretary, who made it a point to be informed of all nominations, discovered that Benseddik was none other than the one who had been abruptly dismissed by Mohammed VI, and then put back in the saddle again by mistake. He informed the king of what happened, and Benseddik's fate is thus sealed. It is in this way that Saâd Kettani, who no longer had a job since the fiasco with the World Soccer Cup, replaces him -- to Kettani's great advantage.! For Benseddik, brutally cast aside, it proved to be a total collapse. He sent letter after letter to the Palace but never received a reply; he appealed to people who no longer listened to him. He ran out of 77

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

money and friends, and fell into a state of depression. 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.! Thus, Abdeslam Aboudrar, president of the central agency for the prevention of corruption, finally admitted that the royal cabinet requested he not address the dossier concerning the thermal spa of Moulay Yacoub. 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." ! Whatever the case, Beseddick, desperate, does something that no other Moroccan before him had dared to do: in a letter addressed to the king in July 2011,68 he expressed the depths of his distress, then at its lowest ebb, and added: "You have been terribly unjust with regard to me and have done me much wrong. I regretfully inform you that, I personally have decided to no longer bear allegiance to you." In breaking this vow of allegiance, the basis for absolute power of the monarchy, Benseddik had managed to open a tiny breach. But as in any conduit through which water flows, it rapidly threatened to engulf everything.!

!

Any Head That Appears Higher Than The Others ! Must Be Cut Down to Size! These episodes allow for better understanding of the context of the plots and networking in which the royal strategy of predation evolves. 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. Thus, Mounir Majidi and Hassan Bouhemou claim that 68 “Ahmed Bensedikk remarked to Mohammed VI: “I decided to break all allegiance to you,”

www.lakome.com, July 26, 2011.

78

they initiated the whole affair from their position within the royal holding company Siger, and that Khalid Oudghiri was kept on the sidelines. "Totally false," claims Oudghiri, ticking off a time-table and rather convincing details: "That is the so-called truth that they are spreading around today to convince people of how well-founded their strategy was." 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. "When I initiated the negotiations for the merger, they did not believe in it for a second. They let me go ahead, skeptical, telling me that Kettani, with whom I was discussing things, ‘would sell me down the river.’ My objective was to make a 'national champion' of the new bank and financial conglomerate. I created a veritable dynamic of growth at the international level. I bought back the CBAO, from Senegal, the Bank of the South in Tunisia, and I negotiated with Crédit Agricole to buy back its branches on the African continent."! Oudghiri's success pleased only a few people. In the name of the principle "any head appearing higher than the others must be cut down to size," Majidi and Bouhemou were waiting for their time, allowing the banker to set up his little game. Word got around that the new entity, growing out of the merger, was called Attijarwafabank. This financial giant, which would actually become the controlling force of the entire Moroccan economy, played the role, at the heart of the royal economic policy, of a powerful pump intended to allow the system to dispose of its increased liquidity.! Any attempts to look too closely into the details of this merger and its consequences were forbidden. Yet Abdeslam Aboudrar, at the head of the central agency for fighting corruption, confided in us: "This operation grows out of the economy of predation, with huge conflicts at stake." The only problem was that Aboudrar's remarks had no impact. He was at the head of one of those numerous empty shells, with no power whatsoever, that had been created by Mohammed VI to give the illusion of change. This was the same case for the competing Council, responsible for making judgements about 79

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

anti-trust practices, but that hardly ever met due to the internal arguments that permeated it.!

!

Attijariwafabank became, by far, the most profitable of all the branches of the ONA. In 2005, the bank showed a profit of 1 billion dirhams, and 2 billion the following year. Similarly, Khalid Oudghiri grew increasingly confident and made his first unwise move, if one gauges it according to the codes operative at the Court. He criticized the confrontational strategy that had been developed by Mounir Majidi and Hassan Bouhemou with regard to French business. 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. It was an unacceptable position in the eyes of the two strategists for the royal family….!

!

To cause a man's downfall, to crush him by discrediting him, means precise and detailed work requiring time and patience. Majidi and Bouhemou had those gifts. Bouhemou often dictated what Majidi should whisper into the king's ear. The idea of an anti-French conspiracy, that the two of them were constructing, is made even more attractive with the addition of Oudghiri, a new element. 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. Thus, for lack of a precise answer from the sovereign, the courtisan has to, through his gestures or his expression, reveal something that passes for agreement. ! 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. Mohammed VI struck his secretary in front of witnesses. 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. To those in his entourage, the king praised Majidi's qualities, saying to them: "He knows how to make money." This seemed to be the supreme virtue in the eyes of the 23rd sovereign of the Alawite dynasty. !

!

Take It Back, I Don't Want To Keep This Document!”! In March 2006, Majidi and Bouhemou decide that the Oudghirir fruit is ripe to harvest. 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. On the night before the board meeting, Oudghiri got a call from Bouhemou informing him that the bank's organization had been modified so there there would be a supervisory council of which he would become president…thereby putting him on the sidelines. Oudghiri confided: "I wasn't fooled, but I answered him: 'Very well. I will announce this myself at the board meeting.' The next day, I presented the outline of the successful merger, the international development plan, and the one granting France a full banking license. At the end of my presentation, I announced: 'I have decided to step back from my activities.'"! 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. He stalled, delaying various actions, and at the end of three months his adversaries abandoned their demand. "But," he went on to detail,"I knew that it was the end. I had completely gotten out from under their control." 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.! In reality, the same words were used for two totally opposing visions. Oudghiri envisaged a complex reorganization which, while favoring the emergence of centers of economic growth, would go along 81

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

with the withdrawal of the the king and his family from the heart of the country's economy -- particularly, he thought, to avoid confusion and political tensions. 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.! In September 2006, Khalid Oudghiri gains entry into the luxurious offices of Majidi, at the very center of the royal holding company Siger. 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. Oudghiri's approach, which was absolutely suicidal, was equivalent to suggesting to an obese person that he stop eating. "Reading it over," he recalls, "Majidi literally became livid. After finishing it, he gave me back the text and stated: 'Take it back, I don't want to keep this document!' Seeing his reaction, I fully realized," he concluded, "that their objective was to take control of the entire economy of the country, and today they have succeeded in doing so."! ! For Majidi and Bouhemou, Attijariwafabank was not only a source for profit-making, but also an instrument of considerable power. No major project could be financed without the foremost bank of the country. 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. An enterprise which one may have wanted to wind up in the king's pocket would suddenly find itself without financial backing, condemned to slow and certain death. On the other hand, the courtesans and beneficiaries of the king's good will, would reap unjustified lines of credit.! It is in this way that Majidi perceived and understood financial activity. But implementing this strategy meant he had to get rid of Oudghiri.! In the same way, control over the central bank also allowed for the refusal of awarding licenses to foreign banks and made sure that their 82

presence in Morocco was carefully screened -- an efficient way of preventing foreign competition. The businesses belonging to the royal holding companies flourished in an almost perfect quasi-monopoly, without being subjected to the slightest competition. And if it were decided, at any point, that there should be an alliance with foreign partners, such as Sonasid with Arcelor Mittal, it was in order to benefit their savoir-faire and expertise. Overall, the king's power in the economic and financial realm moved ahead to assume equally absolute power in the political domain. The Moroccan sovereign had to continually expand the field of conquests, but did not have to share any of them. 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.!

!

For the first trimester of 2007, the profits of Attijariwafabank already exceeded 700 million dirhams, a record gain which would be of no help whatsoever to Khalid Oudghiri. In May 2007, he is dismissed from the presidency of the bank. The news was no surprise to him since he knew his days were numbered. "We are no longer getting along, so let's call it quits," Majidi supposedly said. But this decision came with an unusual final gesture: he granted Oudghiri a goingaway package of $2,966,310 which was spread among three French banks. This was most likely done in just such a way so as to keep the transaction under wraps in Morocco.! It is easy to understand why. 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. The objective was clear: it was not only a question of economic punishment, but a shrewdly elaborated mechanism to generate humiliation. Your friends would distance themselves, your family would be singled out, your authority and prestige would vanish. Throughout the coming months, you would be ready to submit to all kinds of humiliations so as not to endure the others that were heaped on you. And after having waited 83

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

in vain for a return to grace, you would be ready to plead with those who used to be your friends in order to ask them to intercede with the king on your behalf. 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 indemnity handed over to Oudghiri was thus without precedent and can probably be explained by the generosity of Mohammed VI's personal secretary. 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.! Oudghiri's judicial troubles had not even begun, but it is interesting to note that his future condemnation would take into account the reimbursement of a sum whose total corresponds exactly to the indemnity given to him when he left service.!

!

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. Moreover, it would be absolutely contrary to all methods of good governance applied by the Moroccan sovereign. ! To this first affront with regard to the monarch, a second will follow in rapid succession. Separated from his duties by the king of Morocco, Oudghiri will receive, six months later, in March 2008 precisely, the directorship of one of the largest banks in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf kingdom seems to taunt the kingdom of Morocco, implicitly hoping to weaken its authority.! Shortly after taking over his functions as head of the Saudi bank, Oudghiri become the object of a corruption suit, filed on August 1, 2008. The action comes to light four years after the alleged events and two years after he had left Morocco. It was lodged by a businessman, Abdelkrim Boufettas, one of whose uncles, an ex-Minister, 84

was head of the golf club in Dar Essalam, near a residence belonging to the king.! A very odd affair transpires, in which none of the protagonists will play the role one would have wished them to play. The case is transmitted the same day as testimony is given to the state prosecutor's office and an application filed on August 5th precisely. This was astonishing speed for a case without proofs that had been filed four days after the facts.! When he took over the direction of Attijariwafabank, Oudghiri was informed of Boufettass's pre-litigation costs, who owed $22,569,750 to the bank and had still not been reimbursed. He owned land in Marrakech, given as collateral, and the bank was already in the process of auctioning it off. Boufettaas then negotiated deferring the sale of this land originally scheduled for March 16, 2004. In exchange, he committed to immediately pay $5,803,650 to the bank. Oudghiri agreed to a delay in the settlement of the balance, failing which the land would indeed be sold by the bank. The operation unfolded without a hitch. The night before the auction was to be held, the person in charge of legal disputes at the bank meets with Boufettass's lawyer. 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. We are in May 2004, and the dispute appeared to have been settled. Moreover, the bank considered the case closed in 2005. In the complaint he lodged three years later, in August 2008, Abdelkrim Boufettass affirms that Oudghiri supposedly demanded and received 13 million dirhams for the postponement of this auction. The plaintiff relied on the support of an influential attorney, Mohamed Naciri, the Palace's own lawyer…named two years later Minister of Justice. Although at the head of his ministry, Naciri will stay on as prosecuting attorney and his staff will take the floor during the trial -- a blurring of boundaries that illustrates to what extent the royal will is not concerned with the independence of the judiciary.

85

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

Whatever it may be, this trial, the result of personal vengeance, will turn into a tragic farce.! 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." The notary, intrigued, was unaware, at that point, of all the details and the central role he had been assigned. Actually, Boufettass maintained that it was the notary who withdrew the 13 million dirhams to hand them over to Oudghiri. When he came back to Morocco, the notary discovered that his office had been searched -- an illegal act which, had rule of law prevailed, would have certainly nullified the procedure. 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.! Interrogated later on by the court, Boufettass realizes that he can produce no proof for what he claimed, going so far as to admit that it was difficult to determine the exact amount involved in the bribery. 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."!

!

The Strategy of Applying The Tourniquet! In this blindingly obvious affair, the investigation did not rely on a rigorous examination of the facts but on the necessity of bringing charges. 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.! This magistrate's reputation is known throughout Morocco. 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. Thus, when the French judge Patrick Ramaël, working on new elements in the Ben Barka affair, asked him if he would not kindly authorize him to hear testimony from the all-powerful head of the gen86

darmerie, general Hosni Benslimane, on of the pillars of the regime, the magistrate responded that he did not know his address…Judge Serhane is a man of simple formulas: one man = one dossier = one guilty party.! In November 2008, the notary and Oudghiri are questioned without their being informed as to the reasons. All those at the top level of the bank's directorship, notably the current CEO, who might have been able to shed a favorable light on the accused as to the reality of what transactions took place, were dismissed as witnesses by the judge. Anyway, Khalid Oudghiri had never even gotten the slightest summons to a meeting. Everything points to the fact that the single objective of the investigating judge was apparently to figure out how to give a semblance of coherence to a totally fabricated case.! In a parallel manner, it was a real strategy of strangulation used against the banker set up in Saudi Arabia. He received anonymous letters, emails from his shareholders were filled with defamatory messages. ! 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."! "Send them along to me," answers his Saudi counterpart.! "Oh no, I merely wanted to send you a word of warning orally," wisely replied the Moroccan in charge of the dossier.!

!

"During this period," Oudghiri explains, " I went on a pilgrimage to Mecca with my wife and, on the way back, we stopped in a restaurant along the highway. 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."69! 69 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, November 2011.

87

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

In June 2009, the French attorney for Khalid Oudghiri, Pierre Haïk, sent a letter to Judge Serhane to request a meeting with him. The envelope came back to him, opened up, along with the note "refused by the judge."! Then it was Mounir Majidi's turn to intervene. He calls the personal secretary of the Saudi king to let him know that Mohammed VI wished Oudghiri to return immediately. A first step that was not without impact. 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. He leaves his job, and then Saudi Arabia, in July 2009. Back in France, he hires Mohamed Teber as his lawyer, an old friend of Ben Barka's during the days of the struggle. "I found out," he tells him, "that I could see your dossier at a colleague's who was defending the notary, and there was nothing in it." 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."! "I recall precisely," Oudghiri says today70. "The courtroom was supposed to open on Tuesday, and the previous Sunday my lawyer called: "I want to see you in Paris on Tuesday." "But you're not going to be in the court?" "Something new has come up, it is serious." 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. It is useless for you to return." I was flabbergasted. "What can we do?" ! He then developed a metaphor about the unbalance fight between the wolf and the lamb, all of this in order to declare that he could do no more for me and that he was withdrawing from the case. The implication of the Palace in all this frightened him. He received a call

70 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, November 2011.

88

from Majidi, who warned him: "If you defend Oudghiri, you are going against His Majesty."71! ! The judge pronounces his verdict in December 2009, but one would have to wait until its publication in July 2010, to know the full implication of the penalties. The notary, sentenced to 10 years in prison, is arrested right away for "forgery of public documents and fraud." As for Oudghiri, he is sentenced in absentia to 15 years in prison. The two accused men are ordered to jointly pay 35 millions dirhams.! It was a trial which unfolded in an odd manner, where the accuser, Abdelkrim Boufettass, who nonetheless had said that he was the one who "corrupted" Oudghiri, was heard only as a witness, then accepted as plaintiff. By his side was Mohamed Nacirir, the king's attorney and Justice Minister. The charge of bribery was abandoned in favor of "forgery of public documents and fraud," a crime subject to life in prison. 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 notary, obviously innocent of what he was being accused, languishes in prison in Casablanca while Oudghiri's sentence was extended to 20 years. The object in mind was simple: transform his life into a hell, and the man himself into a complete pariah. Moroccan justice once again shows its worst face: a machine for crushing individuals, always ready to be disgraced so as to please the will of the king.! 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. All his accounts and those of his family had been scrupulously examined between 2003 and 2008, even after his departure from Morocco. The notary always denied 71 Ibid.

89

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

having bribed Oudghiri and no link could be established between the two men. It was a pitiful affair that demonstrated, before all else, the extraordinary pyramid of subservience on which Moroccan power was based.72! The king's, of course, but just as all those men who claimed to speak on his behalf. According to the formula that was so often used, "justice was done, but above and beyond everything else, it was the kind of justice that relied on feudal and absolutist good will of a sovereign with mores from another age."!

! ! ! VIII. A Successful Stock Market Hold-up! !

"Anas Sefrioui, clear out!" The protests of the February 20th Movement, which was inspired by the revolutions taking place in Tunisia and in Egypt, targeted a new personality. They hope to see him disappear from the political and economic scene.! Until then, this privilege had been reserved for the tight circle of men who were close to Mohammed VI, those thought to be responsible, according to public opinion, for all the disasters endured by the country, beginning with corruption.! The attack again Anas Serfioui, Moroccan real estate magnate and CEO of the group Addoha, was not gratuitous. Since the summer of 2011, this 54-year old business leader belonged to a tightly closed circle of "hidden billionaires" as identified by the American news agency, Bloomberg. "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." With a fortune estimated at $2,3 billion, which corresponds to 61.74% of the capital in

72 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, November 2011.

90

his enterprise, Anas Sefrioui more than meets the criteria of Bloomberg's selection.! 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 263 million dirhams as opposed to 244 million dirhams for the monarch! Caution is nonetheless advised with regard to these figures. 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. Still worse, that he allegedly was chosen, because of his submissiveness, to represent the wishes of certain key figures from the Palace in his group.!

!

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."73 If it could be said that "work" was his life, then Monsieur Anas ("Si'Anas) as his underlings spoke of him with deference, did not refrain from living the life of a billionaire. 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. And that was what made people easy about him. Right down to his average physical appearance, tinctured with a simple good nature….all of this was relative: a grandfather-like mustache and the slight plumpness of a good family man. 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.! 73 Saloua Mansouri, “Anas Sefrioui: La vérité, toute la vérité,” Challenge hebdo, July 12, 2008.

91

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

Anas Sefrioui was born in 1957 to a family of nine children. 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. In the 1960s and 1970s, his father was administrator of the Banque popular in Fez and, in particular, a prosperous businessman.! 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. This social and financial base will enable the young Anas to leave school at the age of 17. Later on, he will boast about the fact that he was a self-made man. "I wanted to follow my father and learn everything from him. 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 2006.74 "My father appreciated my devotion and my commitment to the job. I spent my time on the road, between Casablanca, Agadir, and Fez, following through on our mining business and our wrapping paper factories."!

!

A Fortune Built on Low-Income Housing! In the course of these constant road trips, Anas showed himself to be a shrewd businessman and improved the family's professional affairs. In the 1980s, the future billionaire jumped into real estate ventures. With informed judgement, he did not choose construction, which required heavy investments, but rather he went into promotion, since speculation gave him the chance to amass a fortune rapidly. 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.

92

motion Groupe Addoha. It was done with great discretion, because he would need patience until 1994 in order to reap the first fruits of his gamble. That year, Hassan II, then at the height of his power, decided, after having neglected the social development of his subjects for decades, to launch a program of supposedly 200,000 low-income housing projects. 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. One year later, in 1995, Addoha inaugurated its first program: 2,371 lodgings in Aïn Sebaa, a polluted industrial suburb of Casablanca where a large number of major Moroccan enterprises had their home office. ! 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.! These constructions often were implemented by the signing of agreements, with public authorities, allowing the promoters to profit from major fiscal advantages and to obtain the land for a small price. "Low-income housing will constitute for Anas Sefrioui the beginnings of his fortune. It is a scandal knowing that the national program is intended the poorest sector of the population but will actually serve to guarantee the fortunes of a handful of real estate speculators," bemoans one of the journalists who worked for a long time on the Addoha case.75 Low income and poor citizens are a source of unlimited profits. In Morocco, the construction of low-income housing, frequently relying on less than adequate quality materials, offers profit margins of 30%…! Towards the end of Hassan II's reign, Anas Sefrioui moves closer to the royal Palace for the first time. 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.

93

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

work, Driss Basri. "Sefrioui was also in touch with influential people in the city of Casablanca," he added while specifying the importance of this detail. In the greatest of secrecy, these men were stockholders at Addoha, to the extent of 15%." A detail impossible, however, to verify. In any event, Sefrioui is certain of one thing: following in the wake of the king is a source of profit.! Several months after Hassan II's death, which happened in 1999, Mohammed VI dismisses Driss Basri and hunts down the colleagues of the ex-Minister of the Interior, among whom are those men from Casablanca mentioned above, who, according to our witness, "were supposedly obliged to get rid of their shares in Addoha. These shares were allegedly transferred to the Palace." This is just as much without proof as was the previous revelation, but he goes ahead with just such declarations: "Anas Sefrioui once again began to weave ties with the Palace at the beginning of 2006, notably with Mohammed VI's personal secretary, Mounir Majidi," he affirms, before adding: "Moreover, Majidi's brother is married to a cousin of Anas Sefrioui," Blood ties are worth their weight in gold.! ! 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." An innovation, this concept consisted in pulling together under the same roof, every service which low-income buyers, often illiterate and without bank accounts, might need: banks, notaries, water and electricity providers…The objective: to accomplish in a single day all the necessary formalities requisite for the purchase of housing, a process which, under normal circumstances, would take weeks, if not months. Addoha enters into a boom period in which its offer meets the immense appetite of Moroccans for new housing.! Anas Sefrioui rubs his hands with glee and can state to Jeune Afrique in 2006: "Our balance sheets from 2002-2005 show net re-

94

sults on the order of a 30% turnover. In 2005, our profits approached $77,382,000 and our capital exceeded $193,455,000."76! ! The Biggest Insider Trading Scandal in Morocco’s History?! In 2006, Addoha will see a marked turning point with the introduction of 35% of its capital on the stock market. 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. ! The operation began on July 6, 2006 with the sale of stocks belonging to Anas Sefrioui himself. Financial projections were in excellent shape, and the the introduction on the stock market was a success. A few days earlier, the weekly TelQuel had announced that "according to initial estimates, the company [had been] oversubscribed by more than 15 times its worth"! It was the first time that a real estate company was listed on the stock exchange and it inspired confidence," was the justification circulating among financial analysts and traders who were, in reality, completely off-base. "In the end, the public offer of sale will be oversubscribed by 18 times its worth. The increase in the share price had been so vertiginous that, in conformity with the rules in place and in order not to put a break on the volumes of trading due to an evaluation that had gone too high, Sefrioui divided the price of a share in half, at the same time doubling the number of share," this journalist recounts.! Sefrioui can indeed rub his hands together: he just pocketed a small fortune of 2.7 billion dirhams. To keep things in perspective, Mr and Mrs John Doe also profited modestly as a result of this operation. "My husband and I could pay for a trip abroad. A colleague out and out paid for the the advance on his house thanks to Addoha. Around me, everybody knew perfectly well that the Addoha shares were going to increase significantly in value, even if we did not know what the 76 Ibid.

95

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

cause for that increase would be," recalls a consultant from Casablanca who specialized in financial communication.! 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. They whispered with conviction that fortunes were made thanks to Addoha. A genuine hold-up that bankers, financial analysts, and traders qualified unanimously as the greatest insider trading ever orchestrated in the kingdom of Morocco.!

!

The minute examination of stock market ups and downs for Addoha reveals that the whole game took place on the four months following the public opening of its capital. 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."77! According to financial analysts, between July and mid-August 2006, the stock title evolved in a reasonable way so as to rise to 800 dirhams per share, due to an "economically based interest" in the real estate speculator.78 The second stage shows the initial excitement of the market. What is the cause for this? The release of a research note by the Bourse d'Attijariwafabank company that assigned a value of 1050 dirhams to Addoha. 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. Disturbing, very disturbing, when it was known that Attijariwafabank belonged to ONA, one of the royal holding companies.! 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. 78 Ibid.

96

the purchase of land, as this information always makes it possible to predict the valuation of a particular group. The third stage, the one that some people were able to call "a stock market hold-up" could thus make its appearance. It is characterized by a continuous increase in Addoha stock, between rumors and speculation.79 On November 10, 2006, it reaches a high of 2014 dirhams and, on that same day, the transactions surrounding its name hit a record level of one billion dirhams, in other words two thirds of the entire stock market's performance! This had never happened in Casablanca, which can be explained by the events that took place the following day.!

!

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. It reflected two tourism proposals which received no takers. 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.! In concrete terms, the State is selling, at a highly competitive price, lands which the real estate speculator commits to develop. 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. It required an investment of 4.65 billion dirhams on the part of Addoha. The second project, at a cost of six billion dirhams, covering 1111 acres, was for the construction of a tourist attraction, also in Rabat.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. 80 Atika Haimoud and Adam Wade, “Immobilier: Addoha a les moyens de ses ambitions,” Aujour-

d’hui Le Maroc, November 17, 2006.

97

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

providing it with plots of land, which would in turn allow Addoha to increase its revenues. 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.! Protected by anonymity, several people familiar with the issue, pointed out the king's entourage as the ones who led the charge. 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. "At the time, I moved heaven and earth to try and find out, but the secret was carefully guarded," recalls this journalist.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. Thus the appearance of this new shareholders of our capitals funds does not come at the best time."! Not very convincing. Six years later, the names of those holding free float capital in the stock market still remains a secret. "I do not have any information about it," admits Assia Warrak, the director of communication for the Casablanca stock market. Incredible! In a 81 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, October 2011. 82 Ibid.

98

market that is regulated the way it should be, what people have been pleased to call the Addoha affair would have sparked an investigation of insider trading. But the Ethics Board for real estate values (CDVM), policing the stock market, chose to avert its glance.! Anas Sefrioui himself, has always firmly denied benefiting from the king's favoritism. "We are definitely not a firm that has been given priority. No one of influence is acting on our behalf […] We have never communicated privileged information. 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.! ! One executive however dares to protest and, from the beginning of 2007, sounds off in the media to denounce what he saw as the favoritism which benefitted the CEO of Addoha. "Everything that belongs to the State must be sold through a bidding process," he points out.84 What is the name of this presumptuous man? Miloud Chaabi, the outspoken boss of the holding company Ynna (BTP, real estate promotion, iron and steel industry, tourism, mass distribution…) which takes in more than 10 billion dirhams in annual revenues. A real thorn in the side of Moroccan management, everything in him is the opposite of his constant rival, Anas Sefrioui. Si'Anas is from Fez, Miloud is from the countryside, born in a small village near Essaouira, on the Atlantic coast. Anas came from an upper-class family. At 12 years of age, Miloud Chaabi was looking after goats and began learning masonry as an adolescent. The two men only had one thing in common: they were self-made men. Chaabi created his first business in 1948 and chose the construction industry. Anas Sefrioui was friendly with Driss Basri, the ex-grand vizier to Hassan II, Miloud Chaabi's rela83 Op. cit. 84 Hassan Hamdani and Fahd Iraqi, “Miloud Chaabi. Le berger qui a décroché la lune,” TelQuel,

no. 297, November 10 - 16, 2007.

99

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

tions with the monarchy were strained…although not so tense as to ever cross the red line.! Today Miloud Chaabi maintains a low profile, letting his son Omar turn down any interviews. 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. The Managing Director of the company, Nourreddine El-Ayoubi, in an interview given to the daily Aujourd'hui le Maroc,85 had, however, admitted that the 53 hectare piece of land had been "bought for 420 million dirhams, or 820 dirhams the square meter. There's a high voltage line that has to be put underground, which raises the price per square meter to more than 1000 dirhams." It is a ridiculously low price: at the time, the square meter was worth about 20,000 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. But this was not the only scandal that surrounded the zoo affair: when the agreement was signed in the presence of the Alawite sovereign, Addoha had promised to set up another zoo. "The State has committed to building a new zoological park of 123 acres, following the highest international standards. Moreover, we are already in contact with world renowned experts in the field for this project which will be situated about one kilometer from the present zoo," declared the Managing Director of Addoha.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.!

!

85 Ibid. 86 Aujourd’hui Le Maroc, op. cit.

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.This is the viewpoint of an insider who spent a long time alongside Mohammed VI. "The real insider trading," he declared, "does not consist only of holding back information ahead of time concerning the stock market. Here the true manipulation of trading consists of granting public land at low cost in the knowledge that the value will constantly grow. They understood, with Addoha, that they could more easily and quickly get rich through the financial markets than relying on the actual economy. It was a tried and true system, which consisted of handing over to Anas Sefrioui cash reserves so that the stock value of the title of these reserves continued to climb."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." For those men, Addoha is a revelation. A true revelation.!

IX.

! ! ! The State Subsidizes His Majesty's Enterprises! !

Discretion is not the primary virtue of the king's men. Especially when it is a question of financial results from the subsidiaries belonging to the royal holding companies. Those are directed by technocrats, mainly technicians or engineers trained and formed in the French mold but returning to serve His Majesty. In this harsh context, where the role of courtesan goes against accountability, showing off economic performance the way you show off muscles, is a means of 87 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, December 2011.

101

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

holding onto one's spot (an ejection seat). The ONA holding company is the at the head of the list involved in these practices.! When the merger with the SNI took place in 2009, its subsidiaries posted the kind of success that would have mad any other business manager green with envy: they were all leaders in their field. 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. Certain subsidiaries like Cosumar, in the sugar industry, enjoy a total monopolistic control of the product, or benefit from exclusivity at the national level, such as Sopriam, the Moroccan distributer of Peugeot and Citroën. ! But let's give Caesar what Caesar is due. Mohammed VI did not initiative the system of royal predation, unequaled in North Africa, except for Tunisia where the president Ben Ali and his wife Leila Trabelsi had systematically acquired entire segments of the economy which would reap profits for their families. ! History is witness to the fact that it was Hassan II who gave birth to the royal octopus that would become the ONA. Nonetheless, aside from agriculture and the royal farms to which he had a particular attachment, the old monarch hardly conducted his affairs in a shrewd way. 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. Somewhat weary, "monsieur son-in-law" was a cardiologist by profession and knew nothing of rural land. He ran the Domaines without any skill for it (but not without arrogance) for nearly a decade.! For Hassan II, the ONA was first of all the means of assuring political power which, because the very nature of an absolute monarchy demanded it, was apparent even in the economic realm. This was not at all the case with Mohammed VI. As soon as he took over power, assisted by his faithful Mounir Majidi, the young king hastened to 102

build up family businesses which, at all costs, had to show a profit. And any competitors who dared to challenge him on economic front had better watch out. They would be wiped out without mercy in the battle that ensued.!

!

Another war, this time a kind of fratricide, was stirring things up in the inner sanctum between 2006 and 2007. It set against each other two strong men from the Palace, the "security" man, Fouad Ali El Himma, who pulled the strings behind the Minister of the Interior, and the "financial" man, Mounir Majidi, who managed royal businesses. One of the episodes of this battle unfolded in 2006 with France as the backdrop. ! Shocked by the way in which certain French companies, like Axa or Auchan, were knocked around by the king's men, French authorities complained to Mohammed VI about how they were being treated in the kingdom. 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. However, a proponent of "divide and conquer," Mohammed VI assigned El Himma the task of looking into the French complaints. 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.88 This is what French interests came down to, in the 2000s: fueling the court's barnyard feeding frenzy. !

!

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. 286, March 7 - 13,

2009.

103

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

the international community. 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).! Since the 1940s, Morocco had indeed a system of compensation run by a self-named Fund whose reserves were fed by fiscal and social withholding taxes, Treasury advances, or even administrative fines. 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. It mattered little that the State budget suffered, that was what it took for social stability. 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. ! Yet, alternative solutions to the compensation Fund were possible. 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)." And to further explain: "It is estimated that the number of poor in Morocco is between 4,5 and 5 million people. When it is known that a household includes, on average, about five people, one million households are directly implicated in this. If the State gave them 1000 dirhams a month, it would cost 12 billion dirhams annually. Far less than the current 45 billion. Even if one takes into account another million households, classified as part of the "vulnerable" middle class and who would thus also get compensation in the form of direct revenue, it is easy to see that there would still remain a comfortable margin in relation to what is spent today in an unjust and inefficient way. Incidentally, that is what we call the cost of non-reform in the compensation Fund."89! 89 Interview with the authors, Rabat, September 2001.

104

Alas, we fear that these financial considerations are light-years away from the concerns of His Majesty and his entourage. If, according to the opinion of some observers who met him, Mounir Majidi is living in unadulterated luxury, the wife of Fouad Ali El Himma carefully stands guard over his privileges. There is an anecdote about this. In Paris for several days during August 2006, Mme El Himma was supposed to return to the kingdom aboard a commercial Royal Air Maroc flight in the company of her daughter and her housekeeper. Discovering the startling news that the housekeeper was traveling in economy, the courtesan's wife gets it into her head to correct this mistake. And this task ended up in the hands of the head of the Moroccan DST (the national surveillance directorate) at the embassy in Paris. But despite threats, RAM refused to provide this preferential treatment. There is no doubt that at this time of year, the flights were packed. It was then that the permanent consul general of Morocco in Paris, Abderrazak Jaidi, called RAM. Convinced that he was on safe ground, he claimed to have been sent by His Majesty.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. And the Moroccan government would not say anything to counter this.! 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.91 And the Minister of Finances, Fathallah Oualalou, today the mayor of Rabat, went on to make this privatizing known, as being "part of the framework of a great project for development of the sugar industry in Morocco and demonstrated the desire of the State to infuse it with a new vigor as much at the agricultural level as at the industrial one." In contrast, the Minister made sure not to emphasize 90 “Une grande mission de l’ambassade du Maroc à Paris,” www.bakchich.info, August 11, 2006. 91 Agence France Presse, September 16, 2005.

105

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

that with these four companies bought up by Cosumar, and thus by the ONA, the kingdom was again in an unprecedented situation: didn't an operation of privatizing essentially set up as a monopoly a business belonging to the head of the government?! Ardent consumers of sugar, Moroccans use, in good years as in bad ones, about a million tons of it, half of which is produced locally the other half imported. 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. As we are reminded by professors Najib Akesbi, Dris Benatya, and Noureddine El-Aoufi, in a work devoted to Moroccan agriculture published in 2008,92 "under the control of Cosumar, subsidiary of the ONA group, the sugar industry was made up of six raw sugar factories, seven white sugar factories, and two refineries;" but the subsidies are paid directly to production plants and to the importers of refined sugar based on the quantities sold. In other words, exclusively to Cosumar, depending on what the enterprise declared. "You can see very clearly the kind of problem this creates," the economist Najib Akesbi went on. "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. Everything transpires in a completely covert manner between these two actors with, on one side, a powerful subsidiary of the royal group, and on the other, an administration that has neither the means nor, and perhaps especially, the will to oversee what Cosumar is willing to declare to it considering how compensation billing is determined.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. 93 Interview with the authors, Rabat, September 2011.

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. In Morocco, the monthly consumption of milk varies between 50 and 60 million liters, of which nearly a fifth is imported in the form of powdered milk, which is primarily used to make yoghurt, the main activity of the Central dairy.94! But the price for powdered milk increases dramatically in price on the world market. In the middle of the 2000s, its price rises on average 20,000 dirhams a ton in 2005 to more than 25,000 dirhams one year later. It was an annoying situation for the Moroccan producers of yoghurt. In 2006, all of them, with the Central dairy at the head, put pressure on the government to reconsider the customs duty for this commodity taxed at 60%.! 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.95 It was as much as saying that public monies were being put to good use. But the Central dairy did not care, preferring to hold onto its margin of profit. And the ONA subsidiary, with the support of other dairy operators, threatened to end its importing of milk…during Ramadan. It was unthinkable. And what was supposed to happen did happen: the government gave in quickly, on the pretext that the upcoming holy month justified a spectacular reduction in duty fees imposed on imported powdered milk. With the stroke of a magic wand (malevolent would 94 Fahd Iraqi, “Lait: ça va bouillir!”, TelQuel, no. 290, September 22 - 28, 2007. 95 Ibid.

107

The Predator-King. 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. In other words, nearly a complete exemption from customs duty.96!

!

Private companies suspected of wanting to overshadow royal enterprises are yet worse treated than the Minister of Finance. The Saudi firm Savola found this out through bitter experience. Its crime? To have successfully competed against products from the Lesieur company, owned by the ONA until 2011. Set up in Morocco in 2004, Savola took off, a priori, with good qualifications in hand: it was whispered that the Palace had even given its blessing because of the good relationship based on monarchic solidarity between the kingdom of Morocco and that of the Al-Saouds.! 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. Unacceptable!! All means were justified to wipe out the Saudi competition, and no one could imagine that Mohammed VI was kept in the dark about how this deal was done, in view of its extreme sensitivity. Thus, there was no doubt that Lesieur brought a claim before the Competition Council for unfair practices in 2007.! It was little more than an empty shell that could not even manage, most of the time, to meet in order to rule on the current cases before it, the Council demonstrated a stunning zealousness and demanded that Savola put an end to its practices of…dumping. 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.! 96 Ibid.

108

The ONA put out an iron-clad argument to dissuade independent distributers (grocery stores, etc.) from disobeying: they threatened to stop supplying them with refined sugar from Cosumar, and with yoghurt and cartons of milk produced by the Central dairy.! 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. In 2010, tired of fighting, the Saudis put their firm up for sale, but no takers were found. At the ONA, revenge is a dish best served cold.!

!

Royal Tantrums. Advisors Are Beaten ! The counter-attack against Savola was disproportionate. It is nothing, however, compared to the actual physical violence that ! comes crashing down, from time to time, behind the thick walls of Mohammed VI's palaces throughout the kingdom. ! The subject is taboo, but it is said that veritable human psychodramas take place in them. The king indeed has the reputation of not being able to control himself when things go beyond a certain level of annoyance. He kicks and punches people without the slightest hesitation when he can't get hold of the first object that he sees.! These crises were brought to public attention in Morocco by the Journal hebdomadaire in 2009, a publication that had been censored over and over again. "The close circle around the king were victims of his fury. Simple bits of anecdotal humor? A way of governing in which fear solidifies authority?" questioned the magazine on its front page.97 But in 2006, only foreign newspapers openly covered one of these royal fits of rage. In June of that year, a work session devoted to the ONA was being held at the Rabat palace in the presence of the sovereign. Mounir Majidi was going through a long exposé when, without 97 Taïeb Chadi and Hicham Houdaïfa, “Les colères du roi,” Le Journal hebdomadaire, no. 372,

November 22 - 28, 2009.

109

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

warning, Mohammed VI got up, moved towards his advisor and knocked him down before beating him up! "That's where you're taking us, you useless good-for-nothing, with your rotten deals!" he screamed, in essence.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. Moatissim was a reputable jurist then in charge of the dossier on the Western Sahara's autonomy. 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. What was at stake, according to El Mundo: a real beating inflicted at the palace in Rabat in front of other advisors with, as a bonus, a royal spitting reinforced by the confiscation of keys to the official car! The daily paper explains that, after having been cared for in Rabat and in Paris, the advisor is offered a stay in the Parisian palace, the Crillon, where those beaten down by His Majesty were used to staying so as to get back in shape at the expense of the wrathful king.!

!

These excesses come from a monarch who, just like his father before him, knows that he has to answer to no one. He blows hot and cold, then his victims benefit from his benevolence more often than not.! This was a most-favored treatment which the members of the agricultural cooperative Copag was not privileged to receive. Situated in the small city of Taroudant, where Jacques Chirac and his wife Bernadette often spent vacations at the famous hotel, La Gazelle d'Or to be specific, Copag manufactured and commercialized dairy products and fruit juices under the trade name Jaouda.!

98 Nicolas Beau and Catherine Graciet, op. cit.

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. Thus, barely ten years after its creation, Jaouda's market share of dairy products went from 3% to 20%. 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. Thus, during that year, a custom-made financial law envisaged ending the fiscal advantages enjoyed by a number of Moroccan cooperative. In the crosshairs of the authorities were exemptions granted in the way of TVA (valued added taxes) and business taxes. But after numerous debates and public outcries by the cooperatives, the decision was finally made to tax only those cooperative which showed revenues above a million dirhams. It was as much as saying that this load was specifically targeting Copag, which more than met this requirement.! Despite these efforts, Jaouda products are still distributed today and continue to delight millions of Moroccans. 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. And it is without shame that in 1996 Hassan II is able to state to Le Figaro: "Yes, I am a major landowner, but I am entitled to it. 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.”!

! !

111

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

The Royal Domains: "Everything Is Confidential."! The lands belonging to the Moroccan monarchy are concentrated within a private set-up formerly called the Royal Domains and today known under the more anonymous name of the agricultural Domains. And it is just about the only thing that is officially known about this mysterious enterprise. Even those students who were writing a thesis on the subject received a reply from the person in charge of communications as well as from the one in charge of the commercial sector that here "everything is confidential"!! In 2008, an in-depth inquiry by the French language Moroccan weekly TelQuel99 managed to life a small corner of the veil. We learned, notably, that the royal Domains made "revenues estimated at $150 million, of which two thirds in exports, particularly in citrus." But also with "more than 170,000 tons of production exported to foreign countries, the group of the Domains was in the highest rank of national exporters of vegetables and citrus."! But the mystery remained total as to the acreage of lands belonging to His Majesty's Domains. Should they be counted in the tens of thousands or in the hundreds of thousands of acres? Young vegetables, citrus, nursery plants, dairy products, apiculture, fish hatcheries, essential oils…The activities of the Domains was varied and one can imagine that the size of the king's properties was at the level of their diversity. 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. With highly productive, well-irrigated terrains situated around Agadir, Marrakech, Beni Mellal, Fes, Rabat, but also in the north of the kingdom, and even near Dakhla, in the middle of the Western Sahara, one can only conclude that this hypothesis [29,652 acres] is very low.!

!

99 Fédoua Tounassi, “Les jardins du roi,” TelQuel, no. 350, December 6 - 12, 2008.

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. A speech delivered on July 30, 2004 kickstarted the reclaiming of his agricultural properties: "Conscious that it is the rural areas which suffer the most from the social deficit, we feel that global repositioning of our economy must necessarily rely on an efficient strategy of rural development, so as to allow for the transformation of the traditional agricultural sector into a modern and productive agriculture."! 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. The son-in-law of Hassan II was sacked unceremoniously and replaced by a close friend, Mounir Majidi. "All important decisions of the group are taken or must be approved by the king's general secretary. The CEO, Bouâmar Bouâmar, takes care of the group's ongoing business. Each operation is overseen by a director who reports to the CEO, who in turn reports to Majidi," the magazine TelQuel reports in 2008. Under these conditions, the agricultural Domains are at the ready to begin their transformation. 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….!

!

Freedom of Expression Is Devastated! Another professional group will go through serious difficulties, in a completely different area, one of freedom of expression. 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.! The year 2007, during which legislative elections were to have been held, began in a completely arbitrary way. On January 15, the pub113

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

lisher of the Arabic weekly Nichane, Driss Ksikes, as well as the journalst Sanaa Elaji were sentenced in the lower court to three years of suspended prison terms and 80,000 dirhams in fines. This weekly, written in the Moroccan dialect (darija), was, in addition, sentenced to suspend publication for two years. The reason? A dossier entitled: "Jokes: how Moroccans laugh at religion, sex, and politics."! 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. The reason, this time, according to ONG Reporters without Borders: "a dossier that called into questionn the objectivity of one of its studies carried out on the Polisario Front, a secessionist movement in the Western Sahara."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. We are still in 2007, and repression of freedom of the press culminates in August with the sentencing of the journalist Mostapha Hurmatallah to eight months in prison without parole for having published a note from the Moroccan secret service that called for vigilance against acts of terrorism.! 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. Several articles devoted to the way in which public subsidies underwrote, in point of fact, the ONA, had revealed too many scandals. Whatever the case, the king's enterprises were becoming less financially productive. In the privacy of the royal cabinet, Mounir Majidi and his strategist Hassan Bouhemou, who had anticipated this break-down, were already working on the next stage:

100 Reporters without Borders, press release from January 18, 2007.

114

getting involved in sectors with high future potential by pretending to fight corruption.!

! ! !

X. The King's Whims!

!

In Morocco, the king sets an example. In this case, a bad 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. Officially, the entity of the king is sacred and no criticism against it is tolerated. 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. Yet, in theory, the sovereign can be deposed. 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."101! In reality, he knew very well that he was able to bring up this hypothesis at no risk since it effectively meaningless. 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. For all intents and purposes, the bey'a, a ceremony of allegiance instituted by Hassan II, represents, above all else, an instrument of power enabling him to reinforce his legitimacy and authority. And his successor understood perfectly that maintaining this vow of allegiance guaranteed him impunity.! Yet, the image he presents to the youth of his country is, oddly enough, undermined. 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.

115

The Predator-King. 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.!

!

Soliciting Bribes! The unbridled corruption and security surveillance of the country initiated under Hassan II, in order to spread fear, is the cement that allowed the system of makhzen to endure until this day. But the scale of these abuses undermines it and may even hasten its end. Is it to extend its life that Mohammed VI delivered his speech of October 10, 2008 on the occasion of a new parliamentary year?! This speech was quite simply devoted to the "indispensable" fight against corruption. "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. It is thus necessary to reinforce the mechanisms required to insure open competition and preserve the free market in all forms of de facto monopolies and earnings sectors, and also in order to prevent criminal offenses." An odd speech since, basically, every one of his words contradicts his actions.! This evolution in the then policy is very disturbing to the US Embassy, the only real Western ally Morocco has, along with France. While French diplomats stationed throughout the kingdom turn a blind eye and impose a self-censorship, their American counterparts warn Washington. In December 2009, the American Consulate in Casablanca sends a "secret" telegram that will later be declassified by Wikileaks. This document devotes a great deal of space to royal corruption in the real estate sector. It emphasized that "institutions such as the holding company belonging to the royal family, the ONA, which now manages many important developments, regularly pres-

116

sures promoters so that they will bestow preferential treatment on the ONA."! 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." According to informers quoted by the consulate, "the main decisions insofar as investments are concerned are actually made by three men in the kingdom: Fouad Ali El Himma, the ex-Minister of the Interior [who was the head of the Party of Authenticity and Modernity PAM, at the time], Mounir Majidi, at the head of the king's private secretariat, and the king himself. Holding a discussion with anyone else was a waste of time. Contrary to popular opinion, corruption in the real estate domain, during Mohammed VI's reign, became more, and not less, insidious."! 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. An American ex-ambassador to Morocco, who still has close ties to the Palace, complained to his country's diplomats about the incredible greed of those surrounding Mohammed VI and of the monarch himself. "This phenomenon seriously undermines the good governance that the Moroccan government is trying to promote," he determines.!

!

Greater Corruption under Mohammed VI Than under Hassan II! The extremely harsh picture painted by American diplomats is reinforced by a basic judgement that removes all credibility from the anticorruption speech delivered by the king a year earlier. "While corrupt practices existed during Hassan II's reign, they became much more institutionalized under Mohammed VI."! Real estate is the most visible component of royal predation. 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. This economic sector also offers, at the 117

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

earliest stages, attractive prospects for returns. Someone close to these operations shared the following cynical observation: "Whatever you cannot get done with the speculator Addoha, you can with the CDG [Caisse de dépôt et de gestion]."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. The small investor who naïvely becomes a shareholder is unaware that what occurred on the stock market was, in reality, completely misrepresented. 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. On the other hand, a myriad of offshore companies, set up in fiscal paradise, got their hands on considerable stock issues before anyone else. 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 introduction of the CGI onto the stock market, coming a year after Addoha's emergence, will have brought in nearly 3,5 billion dirhams, a sum which makes it the second largest public offering on the Moroccan stock market, after Maroc Telecom. The share price will increase five-fold in less than two months. The men of the Palace, headed up by Majidi and Bouhemou, will have overseen every detail of the operation and will have accounted for everything to the king. 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.

118

"rewarded or softened up,"103 according to someone familiar with the scenario.! A financial establishment that thinks itself immune to punishment demonstrated a heightened appetite in this affair. The group Upline, created in 1992, had acquired a new stockholder during the 2000s, to the tune of 40% -- Hamad Abdullah Rashid Al-Shamsi.! 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. When the public offering of CGI was made on the stock market, those in charge of Upline used funds deposited by certain clients to honor the subscriptions of several private entities residing in a fiscal paradise and belong to an Englishman.104 The latter was committed to resell stocks with capital gains that were fixed in advance. The operation is supposed to have brought in as much as 240 million dirhams to Upline, but caught the attention of CDVM, the market watchdog -an organism that had a reputation, however, for great tolerance when confronted by this kind of excess.! Upline was nonetheless sentenced to a fine of 10 million dirhams, which apparently provoked the anger of this relative of the king. He doubtless was concerned about having his actions called into question, and decided to withdraw. Indeed, a royal exit door was opened to him with the buy-back of Upline by a public bank, the Banque Centrale Populaire (BCP). According to the terms of the agreement protocol signed by both parties, the Upline group was valued at a level of 750 million dirhams, the accord anticipating that the first phase of reconciliation between the two establishments would consist in the buying back of 40% of the shares belonging to the pseudo-stockhold-

103 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, November 2011. 104 Samir Achehbar, “BCP-Upline. Un deal ‘royal’,” TelQuel, no. 339, September 20 - 26, 2008.

119

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

er from the Emirates, possibly the one standing in for the king's relative.105! A report from the OCDE, made public in June 2011, in Rabat, before the Moroccan Minister of economic affairs, presents a harsh balance sheet in terms of the kingdom's failures in realm of economic governance. It particularly insists on corruption and lack of transparence, as well as on the numerous deficiencies in the judicial system. It especially confirms a worrisome evolution: good political governance moves slowly, while economic governance regresses rapidly under the repeated assaults by the Palace. !

!

A Secretive Royal Fortune! The relations between the king, his brother, and his sisters are not actually peaceful. Moulay Rachid often lives abroad, two of his sisters frequently spend their time in Paris. A likable and attentive brother, the crown prince became a touchy king, not predisposed to cope even with his family. If we are to believe his cousin, the prince Moulay Hicham, with whom he does not get along, Mohammed VI has been so crushed and ill-treated by his father that this was reflected and continued in the way in which he exercised his official powers. His claim for a complete control over the economy is derived from this logic.! A desire for revenge was supposedly at the origin of a major crisis. 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 sovereign's brother and sisters allegedly only derived a small portion of this considerable wealth -- the part that contained property, lands and real estate. The king is believed to have kept the balance of the inheritance, that is to say, an amount that was surely monumental. This example both dis105 Ibid.

120

turbing and revealing, illustrates once again the astounding relationship that the man has with money but also…with his dead father.! At the end of 12 years in power, Mohammed VI remains a baffling character, whose psychology is difficult to pin down, and which seems to feed on the single-handed domination he exercises over the other members of his family. 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. It is also said that the governor of the Central Bank of Morocco supposedly made all kinds of efforts so that the King's sister, Princess Lalla Meryem, could get medical coverage in France. The man in charge of the Central Bank explained that it was due to the financial strains, relative of course, encounteed by the princess.! During this time, the king was satisfying his whims. He collects luxury sedans but also paintings. There is, obviously, the unavoidable Mounir Majidi, who coordinates the purchases from the most important art galleries in the world. The man responsible for the acquisitions was Hassan Mansouri. He is the protégé of Hassan Bouhemou, and was one of the founders of Upline as well as of the opposition magazine Le Journal hebdomadaire. 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.! Mohammed VI displays a strange attraction for a painter whose universe is at antipodes to his own: Marc Chagall. 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. Chagall exerts a genuine fascination for the king of Morocco.! The private fortune of the king is surrounded with such secrecy that all kinds of speculation is possible. In the 1990s, the opponent Moumen Diouri estimated that there was 10 billion francs held in about 20 Swiss French, and American banks. In January 2000, right after the arrival of Mohammed VI to the throne, Cheikh Yassine, the 121

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

islamist head of the movement Justice and Spirituality, encouraged the new king to "buy back and go beyond the crimes of his father, by bringing back to Morocco the fortune amassed by Hassan II in order to lighten the foreign debt of the country." The sovereign prohibited the publication of the letter written by the old islamist leader.!

!

"Would You Like Some More Pasta, Your Majesty?"! There are countless political actors who have written about the solitude of power, and Hassan II confided, voluntarily, that "a king has no friends." In any event, he was not lacking for courtesans surrounding him. And it is interesting to note that the Moroccan sovereign today moves between two circles who do not communicate with each other.! 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. The king rarely meets with members of the government but nearly every day with this handful of men who owe him everything. They carry out his orders, satisfy his smallest whims, wipe away his tantrums and the insults against him. Subservients, and even humiliated before witnesses, they have given up all dignity in exchange for significant material compensation. Tyrannized by the king, they have become, in turn, the tyrants of those who answer to them.! Proximity to the king within the heart of the Palace is not sufficient in order to belong to this inner circle, that of the privileged people who surround the sovereign. Several of his cousins and other individuals whose unexpected backgrounds are among them.! This is notably the case of Abdelmoula Ratib, an ex-traveling salesman from the markets in Paris and the provinces. The man established, in Morocco, a textile association that today exports 70% of its production to Europe and 30% to the U.S. This miner's son, who grew up in Bethune, now is the director of 8000 employees. Between the one who inherited the throne and the businessman who grew up in the shadow of the mining towns, the complicity is as intense as it is 122

unexpected. 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.! As a guest invited to evening parties organized by Mohammed VI in his palace, Ratib is also welcomed to the king's vacation homes. 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. Ratib was privileged to be received by the king as a guest on this schooner and the king showed him, along with his family, the entire vessel, including his bedroom, such an unusual occurrence that Ratib, enchanted by the gesture, confided to his close friends "I am the only one to have ever seen it." 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.! Another individual who was regularly a guest in the royal apartments: Saïd Alj. He was indirectly familiar with the Palace, behind the scenes. His uncle was actually Hassan II's perennial court jester, after having served King Fahd of Saudi Arabia in that same capacity. This discreet businessman acquired the reputation of a rising star who destroyed everything in his path. At the head of his holding company Sanam, he controlled a food-processing group which acquired several associations of the ONA.! The latest operation: Monégasque Maroc, a canning subsidiary belonging 100% to the ONA. an acquisition that allowed him to become the world leader in anchovy canning. Another privilege bestowed upon Saïd Alj: granting him numerous plots of land at prices that were unbeatable. The group most recently launched into the real estate sector, and this time it would have as a shareholder, represented by a nominee, Fouad Ali El Himma, the political advisor to the king.!

!

Proximity to the monarch is obviously the source of advantages for those who benefit directly, privileged men adrift in a sea of gloom. Before this systematic bleeding of the country's economy by the king, a 123

The Predator-King. 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. "Morocco," he concluded sadly, "is the only country in the world where rich and poor alike dream of leaving."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. The world of spectacles and showbiz obviously fascinated the Moroccan monarch, who went to dine, on at least one occasion, in the Paris residence of Johnny Hallyday, one of his idols, wearing jeans and cowboy boots. 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." Several minutes later, the singer supposedly asked: "Would you like some more pasta, your Majesty?"!

!

"Yes, I'm Entitled To It!"! Like his father, it is probably the privilege of kings, Mohammed VI is thus a capricious man who does whatever he chooses. 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.! The French president, so close to Hassan II, got it into his head that he would become a second father to the new king. First psychological mistake. Jacques Chirac's advice often bothered him, even irritated 106 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, December 2011. 107 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, 2009.

124

Mohammed VI sometimes, and the generation gap between the two men exaggerated the misunderstandings. 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. Not one single time did he complain of these problems to the sovereign, who, in any event, seemed to treat the president of the French republic as he treated French businesses in Morocco: with the most cavalier of attitudes.! An anecdote illustrates this in an astonishing way, and bears witness to the second psychological error made by Chirac. During one of their meetings, he gave lots of advice to the Moroccan sovereign about good economic governance and suddenly shot out: "I know a remarkable economist who could, your Majesty, provide you with excellent advice. It is Michel Camdessus, the ex-Director of the International Monetary Fund. Would you like him to come and see you?"! The king shook his head mechanically, probably less as an affirmation than to terminate the visit. Chirac immediately contacted Camdessus, who was dispatched to Tangiers where the king was staying. He waited in vain at his hotel for a call from the Palace…The king could not have been unaware of the his visit. he clearly had been informed of it, but he simply had decided to ignore it, as if it did not exist. Annoying for Camdessus and humiliating for Chirac, the episode reveals the extent of his supreme contempt for any form of intrusion, however good the intentions might be.!

!

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." The slightest infraction of that principle demanded a severe punishment. Such was the case with Primarios, that company belonging to the king which decorated and furnished the palaces. Run by Hassan Mansouri, the man con125

The Predator-King. 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. A hotel whose principal shareholder is the ONCF (Office National des Chemins de Fer), but which was the unofficial high level meeting place for Moroccan diplomats. 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. An opulent and exotic setting, in any case, a spot that was custom-made to ensure the smoothest of corruption, if we are to believe the gossips. 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.! And precisely for the reason of having called into question certain details concerning the décor that Mohammed VI wanted, Robert Bergé, the Director of the Mamounia, in his job for 13 years, was kindly requested to leave. It was as if to say that the questioning of Primarios in the press had elicited the king's anger. As all of us know that Moroccan justice is exemplary and independent in all aspects, the trial ended up with 5.9 million dirhams in awards for damages imposed on the magazine. An exorbitant sum that the the publishing company in question is obviously unable to pay and which could very well oblige it to close down.!

!

Several things remain to be said with regard to Marrakech. The hotels of this city, at least those that he controls, are a source of irritation for Mohammed VI. In addition to the unfortunate affair concerning the Mamounia, the Royal Mansour, which belongs to him, was recently swept by a wave of panic. The "king of the poor" had himself conceptualized this luxury establishment where prices for the finest riads could reach $16,766 a night. A dream setting inaccessible to 99% of the world's population. The kingdom's business was nonetheless rel-

126

egated to second place while it was being built and decorated, the king devoting all his attention to the slightest accessory.! The luxury hotel receives the reigning families of the Gulf region, notably Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. A dream-like setting that perfectly fit these privileged clients. Up until the day that scandal brooke out and, worse yet, was repeated. Astounded princes discovered that they had been robbed of large sums of money and priceless jewels, all of which were removed from their apartments. Yes, a thief was lurking in the Royal Mansour and went so far as to repeat his crime. In the king's hotel!! The princes complained to the sovereign, who, wild with rage, immediately ordered an inquiry. For several weeks, the 500 employees of the hotel were interrogated, their testimonies and schedules crosschecked. The police, the investigators, mingled with the personnel. 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. Indeed, neither the French press attaché from the hotel, Claire Jacopin, nor the one in the Moroccan hotel itself, Sarra Essail, dared to respond to our questions. 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. According to a study done in summer 2011, by the Masnaoui Mazars office for the Council on Competition, this sector posted revenues of two billion dollars and an annual growth of 9%. It is thus an economically profitable area and, moreover, under-regulated, a fact which does not go unnoticed by the Palace. Indeed, the logos of Marjane and Acima, which, as we have noted, both belong to the royal holding company, control 64% of the mass distribution market, way

127

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

ahead of their competitor Label'Vie, whose market share does not exceed 28%.! In point of fact, the expansion of the Marjane network lay less on its dynamism than on the arbitrariness of royal power. 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. It was a rate of growth whose implementation would depend on a very simple chain of command, according to someone familiar with the case.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. Its stores sent alcohol, actually, which runs counter to the law enforced throughout the country, and these sales of wine and liquor represent about one third the total revenues under the royal logo…! Generous towards the group that belonged to the king, Moroccan authorities were much pickier with his competitors. Carrefour was thus exiled to Salé, a lower-income suburb of Rabat.!

!

In March 2010, Mohammed VI undertakes an official visit to Gabon to meet with his great friend the president Ali Bongo. The ties between the two heads of State, close and friendly, go back to the reign of Hassan II. Omar Bongo, another great predator before the Lord, had managed, after more than 40 years in power, to leave a oil goldmine as unpopulated as Gabon in an unbelievable state of underdevelopment. 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. He

108 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, November 2011.

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.! Freed from the rule of an overwhelming father, the inheritors of the Moroccan throne and that of the small republic of Congo were in agreement with regard to what was of greatest interest to both of them: business.!

!

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. Managem is a subsidiary of the ONA, which explains the special treatment derived by Gabon. 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. According to an official communiqué, this project "is fully part of the pillar -- Gabon industrial -- on which president Ali Bongo relies to develop his company project "Gabon emerging."! 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. The exploitation of another gold-mine by Managem, in Ekeli, is on the books, and the OCP (Office Chérifien des Phosphates) anticipates mining Gabonese resources shortly.! 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. This mining activity scarcely could be thought of as helping the development of the country -- and that is an understatement.! The most important mine in Morocco exploited by Managem is the one in Akka. Located 280 kilometers south of Agadir, it has been active since 2001, but its allotment in favor of Managem goes back to

129

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

1996. Its exploitation benefited from French aid, which is outrageously scandalous. Here is why.! Officially, the mine enabled the region to be opened up by creating a network of roads, electricity, water, telecommunications.! Unofficially, the reality is far more somber. In order to extract the gold ore, hundreds of tons of water were required. Managem, in order to do this, activated numerous wells, each more than 1000 yards deep, thus considerably reducing the available water table. The consequences are dramatic: the desert encroached. 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.109 Interestingly enough, this disenfranchised region never was rewarded with the slightest visit by the king.! Formerly, most of these mines belonged to the SMI, the public company that was privatized in 1996. Of course, Managem presented itself as the buyer but, by a strange coincidence, the over-exploitation of these sites only began in the 2000s with the arrival of Mohammed VI and his clique to power. At the Imiter site, near Thingir, this outrageous over-exploitation provoked demonstrations in 2011. The minors, as a sign of protest, turned off the factory valve that was the source of water feeding the mine. This water which was literally taken away from the residents of the region. Last year, Managem showed revenues over 654 million dirhams.! ! "Call Bouygues Immediately!"! In Morocco, land is the symbol of power. In this deeply agricultural country, it is the ultimate sign of wealth, and it is through this value that the arbitrariness and omnipotence of the king, but also his generosity, is best demonstrated. He is the one who takes them over, confiscates them, but also hands them out to reward or recognize evidence of loyalty. Land is, for this king, both a means of governing 109 Internet forum entitled “forum-souss.exprimetoi.net”

130

and of showing that he remains above the law; even using it as leverage in public agencies.! 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 stated that a plot of 306 acres was taken away from them, which had been in their possession since 1992. They denounced the abuse of power, which hindered the registration of their land and allowed for the expropriation.! The 301 acres in question, the object of the lawsuit, are in Mdiq, where the king spends every summer since he acceded to the throne, and this property would be used to construct a tourist complex nearby, Tamuda Bay, and a Ritz-Carlton hotel. 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. One of the king's whims that emerged full-blown out of the land. It is partially financed by public funds, while at the same time the former owners, whose land was seized, would never have been compensated. Another royal whom, Mohammed VI's residence nearby Mdiq was fitted with sensors, spreading orange flower perfume around the area, in order to eliminate foul odors.!

!

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. The opponent Moumen Diouri affirmed that Hassan II owned 15% of the Bouygues company and that this "secret" had been carefully hidden. During the course of our investigation, we looks for plausible evidence of this investment. In vain. 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.! Thus there came a day that Hassan II decided that he wanted to speak on French television. It was at the end of the 1990s. He was standing in one of the reception rooms in the Rabat palace, sur131

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

rounded by several stiff-looking and deferential advisors. He suddenly turned around towards his communication advisor, André Azoulay, and shouted at him impatiently: ! "When can I go on?"! "You can intervene at the end of the France 2 news, your Majesty."! "For how long?"! "About 15 or 20 minutes."! "And the other option?"! "It would be TF1, on the program 7 sur 7.! An annoyed look.! "Ah is that Sinclair?"! "Yes, your Majesty."! "And the program lasts how long?"! "An hour."! "I'll take it, call Bouygues immediately."110!

!

Two weeks later, the program was slotted as a priority, despite hesitations by Anne Sinclair. Martin Bouygues, Patrick Lelay, Etienne Mougeotte then took off in a private jet at the Rabat airport in order to be present at the recording session of the program.!

! ! ! XI. A System Gone Crazy! !

Mustapha Terrab belonged to that elite corps of engineers trained in the prestigious Frence and Anglo-saxon universities. At 56 years old, he went through Ponts et Chaussées as well as the famous Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After an extended stay in the U.S., he returned to Morocco and masterfully managed the procurement of the second licensing of cell phones in the kingdom. Then he 110 This scene unfolded in 1993 in the presence of one of the authors (E.L.).

132

went into self-imposed exile in the U.S., in Washington, where he worked for the World Bank before being named general director of the Office Chérifien des Phosphates in 2006. Better known under the acronym OCP, this public enterprise of about 18,000 employees, is the world leader in exports of phosphates and represents nearly 3,5% of the country's GNP.! 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. The situation was dramatic since the deficit of these funds exceeded 32 billion dirhams111 and the retirees were paid, at that time, out of the business's own reserves. Explosive circumstances, financially as well as socially. The OCP has a reputation for lack of transparency. A French bank which, despite this, provided it with loans over several years, never was able to gain access to its accounts. "A situation that is hardly orthodox," the banker in question confided to us.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. The result: barely a few months after his assuming his office, the CPO dismisses several leading executives from the OCP in September 2006. They would be associated with crimes such as fraud and forgery of records, ou even issuing backdated commercial visas.113 The situation becomes particularly alarming then, with regard to foreign subsidiaries who were posting record losses. 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. 112 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, January 2011. 113 Nicolas Beau and Catherine Graciet, op. cit.

133

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

sale of phosphates at discount rates to an American firm run by a former commercial executive of the OCP…!

!

"If This Were Known, The Whole System Would Blow up!"! The investigations that were being conducted also revealed that unscrupulous members of the staff were not the only ones responsible for the financial mismanagement that was in place. Someone close to the king, very close, also was singled out. An enormous scandal was shaping up: "If this were known, the whole system would blow up!"114 a close collaborator of Mustapha Terrab's confided to us with horror. In reality, what he was actually saying was quite simply that the monarchy was at great risk if the information was made public.! Yet King Mohammed VI delays publicly receiving the head of the OCP who was to review with him how the enterprise would be cleaned up -- and in this way, indicate that he was protecting him. But all's well that ends well. Mustapha Terrab puts the OCP back on its feet, and the internal retirement funds will end up being outsourced in 2008, and partially bailed out by the indispensable Caisse de dépôt et de gestion (CDG0, the primary function of the CDG finally being not so much to bring in the savings of Moroccans as to repair the damage caused by the abuses of the monarchy.!

!

Chakib Benmoussa, however, will not have that same luck. He was also a graduate of MIT and the Ecole Polytechnique. He does not become a leader in business, but rather a Minister. He holds the strategic portfolio of the Interior, a Minister whose strings are pulled by Fouad Ali El Himma in reality, after having filled the post of appointed Minister from 1999 to 2007.! Highly regarded by his European peers, Chakib Benmoussa straightens up his ministry. Refusing to become Fouad Ali El Himma's 114 Interview with one of the authors, Casablanca, September 2011.

134

puppet as his predecessors had been, he begins resisting in 2009, on the eve of communal elections. As at each electoral rendezvous, the whole ball of wax for the Palace is to prevent moderate islamists from the Party of Justice and Development (PJD) from carrying the election. 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.! The Moroccan political arena, being first of all about courtesans, numerous politicians seeking privileges join PAM, lock, stock, and barrel. In Morocco, this pre-electoral phenomenon is called "transitional migration." But against every expectation, Chakib Benmoussa refuses to allow the Ministry of the Interior to ratify the PAM lists on which these "transitionists" were massively registered. He will be quickly dispatched on January 4, 2010, without having been offered another job.! "He's an honest man who did not steal. At month's end it was difficult to make ends meet, all the more so since he was under the equivalent of house-arrest. He did not complain but it was hard not to be able to work," one of his friends, the ex-Minister trying to avoid journalists, said in an aside to us.! 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. It is an annoying counter-example in a system ruled by subservience and greed.!

!

"The King Does Not Speak, The King Does Not Communicate."! These episodes in the daily life of the Court under Mohammed VI show the extent to which the king's advisors determine life or death decisions over the rest of the power elite with regard to job security. For the journalist Ali Anouzla, who ran, with great success, the news 135

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

website Lakome, it was partially due to the way in which Mohammed VI ran the country: "The king does not speak, the king does not communicate, and even the most highly placed individuals in the administration do not meet with him. Everything concerning political affairs goes through Fouad Ali El Himma, and everything dealing with the economy and business goes through Mounir Majidi."115 He is a sovereign whose silence and absenteeism opens the way for those two men. [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.]! Despite this two-man management system, El Himma and Majidi carry on a war that is as petty as it is useless. Between 2007 and 2011, this battle unfolded in various newspapers. It was spurred on by whomever of the two revealed the most sordid revelation about the other. 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." Among the revelations: the Minister of Habous (Affaires et Patfrimoine religious) is supposed to have deeded over 11 acres to Mounir Majidi in 2005, that were located in the tourist area of Taroudant for the symbolic price of 50 dirhams the square meter. 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.! In March 2011, it is Fouad Ali El Himma's turn to be in the spotlight, thanks to the daily Al Massae. A year earlier, the consulting firm he owned, Mena Media Consulting, had won an important contract with the ONE (Office National d'Electricité). The amount of profit was high: 7,5 million dirhams net after ten months, or 750,000 dirhams per month. The problem was that no call for bids had been arranged.! 115 Interview with one of the authors, Rabat, July 2011.

136

The head of the paper Al Massae will have to pay dearly for his damaging remarks. It came at the exact moment when the king's friend was being attacked by the demonstrators from the February 20th Movement: on June 9, 2011, indeed, Rachid Niny was sentenced to a year of prison without parole and it was confirmed by the Court of Appeals on October 24 of that same year. He officially was accused of "disinformation" following an article that referred to the head of the internal Moroccan secret service operation. Obviously, no one was fooled.!

!

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. Without these hundreds of people indebted to them, royal enterprises could never have made its impact on Moroccan or on the business class. Their fate was tied to the king's prosperity. In his enterprise of predation, Mohammed VI could count on all those who were operating in the hopes of gaining personal privileges. 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. As an eminent member of the makhzen revealed "aside from several highly placed bureaucrats who have more power than others, the system is also based on the locking up of three key sectors which might appear to be secondary."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.

137

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

which have to be initiated; the directorate of land registry, to know what can be plundered and what cannot be." ! In terms of business know-how, it is Mounir Majid who understood best how to position his pawns, backed up by Hassan Bouhemou. The two men reigned over a vast network of bureaucrats, intermediaries, and heads of industry. The cornerstone of their arrangement, dedicated, of course, to His Majesty, remained the general manager of the CDG. Anass Alami had been parachuted to this job in June 2009 by Mohammed VI, following Mounir Majidi's suggestion. The naming of this pale director, very close to Bouhemou, is symbolic of the Palace's control over the CDG. 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.!

!

These "servants" being at the mercy of the slightest change in royal mood, Mounir Majir took over the responsibility of regrouping his circle of close friends at the heart of Maroc Cultures, which organized the festival of Mawazine music. Since 2006, he himself presided over this association. Contrary to the established technocrats of the kingdom or to the leaders of public industries which boasted solid international credentials, Majidi's little clique was singularly lacking in scope, like its mentor. 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.!

!

138

The circle of Fouad Ali El Himmi is also cast in the image of the character: more complex and a jack-of-all-trades. The king's friend, goes hunting for big game on the margins of politics, diplomacy, the economy -- and even teaching. It is he who maneuvered so that his old buddy from the Royal College, then Minister of the Interior, Yassine Mansouri, would be catapulted to the head of the official press agency, MAP, then to the DGED, the Moroccan equivalent of the DGSE (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure).! Another man, Khalil Hachimi Idrissi, was also named to the MAP in 2011, again by El Himma. It was a promotion pour this journalist who, when he headed up the daily Aujourd'hui le Maroc, was known for his Jaguar and his editorials insulting opponents and the Algerians.! 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. He acted as if he were on the left, but he violently threw off his mask by recruiting for the party recently created by the king, the famous PAM. 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. Until November 2011, Cheikh Biadillah was both president of the second chamber of Parliament and general secretary of PAM.! But El Himma's biggest catch remains unquestionably the businessman Aziz Akhennouch. This huge fortune engaged in two paradoxical activities: he filled the post of Minister of Agriculture…while directing the energy group Akwa. !

!

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. Even that of sports, and more specifically, the favorite sport of Moroccans: soccer. The scandal of the FUS club (Fath Union Sport) is evidence of the 139

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

ways in which Mohammed VI went about business with his collaborators when they sought low-cost lands and new money.! Yet in 2008, optimism dominated the ranks of soccer fans: the king's private secretary was just chosen to direct the FUS. This choice was not unusual since it is always someone in the Palace inner circle who fulfills duties that are related to sports, social life, and political life. And of course, because of his closeness to the monarchy Majidi is in a position to bring wealth and success to the club.! He thus forms a dream-team, made up of renowned owners, in reality his own men: Moatassim Belghazi, the president of the Somed and future manager of the ONA; Moncef Belkhayat, the CPO of Atcom (finance) and future Minister of Youth and Sports; as well as Ali Fassi Fihri, brother of the ex-Minister of foreign affairs and director of the ONE. 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.! Under the cover of promoting soccer and making the FUS national soccer champions, the king's private secretary sought to gain for himself, in fact, the club's significant property inheritance: nearly 50 acres in the heart of the capital.! The man rapidly set to work. He proposed a memorandum of understanding to the elected officials of Rabat. 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. In addition, Majidi cleverly dangled the lure of creating a sports academy, since the elected officials of Rabat, notably those on the left, were initially in opposition to the agreement…before giving in under pressure.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. 341, March 15 - 18.

140

without financial compensation." This veritable "theft" of public land, which is worth a fortune, is in reality the result of a carefully layered strategy by Majidi.! From November 2007, a Society for the Development and Promotion of Sports (SDPS) was commercially registered before being put on hold. It emerged, strangely enough, from the CDG, and its financing reached nine million dirhams, a very large sum. Majidi then created two other enterprises, subsidiaries of the FUS company. The first, FUS Development, is a real estate promotion company and it is to this group that the city council of Rabat transfers the Belvédère stadium. The elected officials even envisaged a moment at which to conclude another agreement with a second enterprise created by Majidi, FUS Gestion. They would have put at his disposition yet another stadium as collateral against a fee whose total had not even been mentioned on the documents.118! Fortunately, a sudden burst of honor prevented them from stooping to that level. They denounced the project. 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.!

!

Mohammed VI's Festival! Majidi does not appreciate culture any more than he does soccer, but he is interested in this area for the same reasons. Even music festivals, genuine celebrations by the people in Morocco, fail to escape his attention. This is notably the case for the music festival of Rabat, Mawazine, created in 2001, it happens each year in May "under the high patronage of His Majesty the King Mohammed VI."! In the beginning, the event started from a basically good royal intention: offer the kingdom's capital city a festival worthy of its name. After all, the city of Fez had its own, devoted to sacred music and had 118 Ibid.

141

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

an international reputation, the beautiful city of ramparts, Essaouira also had its Gnaoua music…The decision was thus made to fill in the gap of world music with the intention of bringing together the cultures of the deep south. ! 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. And the magic happened, he managed to put soul into Mawazine. "High-level cultural events, with discussions, and the arrival on scene of well-known and lesser-known performers, but always interesting. It was a great time," sighed one Festival admirer who looked back fondly on the first years.119 ! In 2006, unfortunately, Mawazine went through a serious financial crisis. It was near to bankrupt and, to salvage his creation, Mohammed VI sent Mounir Majidi to the rescue. It was then that he set himself up with his team in the presidency of the association Maroc Cultures, organizer of the festival. The programming was changed around as of 2007. 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. The crowds were packed in and even the royal princesses went there. 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.! Alas, that year, the festival went under: 11 people perished during a rush of the crowds. A single exit was opened to evacuate thousands of spectators, and some families of the victims have still not yet been compensated. But this was not the only shady area of Mawazine.! ! 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.

142

derwrite the king's festival. With a budget of 62 million dirhams in 2011, the monies raised by the association were not sufficient.! Marwan120 worked on the inside of Maroc Cultures, presided over by Majidi. He wore many hats, as a result of which he was in contact with numerous officials. For him "even if, today, people say that the festival is not longer underwritten with public monies, it is a lie. In 2010, the city of Rabat discreetly gave 1,1 million dirhams to Mawazine. Then in 2011, a member of the city council confirmed to me that Rabat would have spent around four million dirhams"121 he affirmed without showing any proof of what he claimed. And that was not all. "Insofar as public companies were concerned, the principal sponsors are the CDG and the OCP, to the tune of $1,000,000 each,122 Royal Air Maroc took care of the travel of hundreds of people, and as for the ONCF (chemins de fer) and the ONE (electricity), they poured between $50,000 and $80,000 approximately," he went on to say.! The private sector did not seem to be outdone. The financier Othman Benjelloun (group BMCE, a Moroccan bank) and the owner of the group Akwa, who is also Minister of Agriculture, Aziz Akhennouch, are said to have spent around 1,5 million dirhams each.123 Maroc Télécom supposedly "subscribed" to the tune of 1,3 million dirhams. The SNI, the ONA, both royal holding companies which recently merged, kick in to the pot, as would Attijariwafabank, but apparently in a far more modest way.124! 120 The first name has been changed. 121 Interview with one of the authors, Casablanca and Paris, July and November 2011. 122 See also Aïcha Akalay, Hassan Hamdani and Mehdi Michbal, “Mawazine, un miracle royal,”

TelQuel, no. 425. 123 Ibid. 124 Ibid.

143

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

! This information is, for the most part, corroborated by inquiries that appeared in the Moroccan press. 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. It is also learned that the list is even longer than that put together for Marwan: it would amount to 21 sponsors and partners. 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.125 But the amounts poured in remain a taboo subject. No sponsor among those we have contacted wished to reveal his contribution to the subsidizing of Mawazine,"126 explained L'Economiste.! If we are to believe Marwan, some firms were allegedly taxed twice. "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."!

!

The Year that Mawazine Nearly Died! This scheme could have gone on for a long time had the protesters from the February 20th Movement, motivated by the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen, had not gotten involved in it. 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. The squandering of public funds was especially emphasized.!

125 Badhir Thiam, “Mawazine, Maroc Cultures peaufine son modèle économique,” L’Économiste,

no. 3527, May 11, 2011. 126 Ibid.

144

"Speculation about annulling the festival was raging within the group," Marwan recalls. "We did not really know if it would be held or not. Majidi withdrew and went to hide out in Florida." Then towards mid-April 2011, relief came: Mohammed VI gave the go-ahead. The 2011 edition of Mawazine was thus maintained despite social upheaval. Thus the king had decided.!

!

Yet, scarcely several weeks before the opening curtain, there was a near catastrophe. A French media publication, Africa Intelligence, began making waves by publishing news that wreaked havoc in the highest echelons of the Palace. A certain Peter Barker-Homek, with American nationality and an ex-CEO of the oil company Taqa, held by the emirate of Abu Dabi, spilled the beans after having been let go. Bearing a huge grudge, he asked an American court to award him $130 million in damages from his ex-employer.! In his filing, registered in August 2010 at a U.S. court hearing, he accuses, among others, Taqa of sending him to Morocco in 2008 "in order to distribute among several individuals,127 shares of capital from the Jorf Lasfar electric power facility, controlled by Taqa. Jorf Lasfar providing nearly half the electricity in Morocco, this power station is considered on of the most profitable contracts in the world. It is easy to imagine that discussions, if there were any, revolved around huge sums of money.! 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.128! A letter from his attorney, written in January 2011 to the office in charge of alerts for the commission running operations at the Stock 127 Africa Intelligence, no. 635, September 15, 2010, and Intelligence Online, no. 624, September

9, 2010. 128 Intelligence Online, no. 624, September 9, 2010.

145

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

Market, the American SEC, will further detail the allegations. 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."129 A revelation or a settling of personal scores? For the newsletter Maghreb Confidentiel, that published extracts of this letter, the music festival in question was Mawazine.! As for Hassan Bouhemou, he denied the whole thing and called it a conspiracy. Might he have been telling the truth? "It seems that the American made a mistake with the name Hassan and actually meant a Hassan in another royal enterprise,"130 an acquaintance of Bouhemou's believed.! 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." And in June 2011, he will bring suit against Maghreb Confidentiel for defamation of character.!

!

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. Just like the name of Moncef Belkhayat, who directed communications for Maroc Cultures, disappeared from the press kits and other materials. 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. 971, May 12, 2011, and www.lakome.com, May 13, 2011. 130 Entretien with one of the authors, Paris, December 2011.

146

20th Movement, calling them traitors to the monarchy and supporters of the Polisario Front!! "The first day of the 2011 Mawazine, Mounir Majidi attended the opening ceremonies with his family. He came surrounded by his lieutenants, but in reality the VIP box was almost empty," Marwan recalls. In order to reassure himself of the festival's success, Mohammed VI called his private secretary, who, as we are told, was really sweating it…! Mounir Majidi always came to all the concerts to make a point of showing that he had the king's confidence. "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. They varied them according to how famous the star was that was performing, but the unwavering goal was to declare more than two million visitors in order to show that they were doing better than 2010," Marwan went on. But their heart was not in it anymore.! Fatim Zahra Ouataghani, the woman who ran PR Media, the agency managing press relations for the festival, skips both the concerts and press conference. The wildest of rumors circulates at that time among the team at Maroc Cultures. "There was talk of shell companies to which certain contractors for the festival had to turn over a portion of their profits," Marwan recounts. Undeniably, the magic is gone. But if Moroccans were disgusted by all this, the men of the Palace saw nothing, heard nothing, were unaware of the warnings that were sent out.! Soccer, music concerts..The economic predation knows no limits and impunity is the rule of thumb. The system accelerates without anyone being capable of putting on the brakes. Not even in France were they able to do anything about it, despite that country being one of the most fervent political and financial supporters of the Alawite kingdom and throne.!

!

147

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

XII. How France and Europe Finance Royal Projects!

!

"We are not the Red Cross. We do not bandage wounds of a developing country. These last two years, we were unaware of fraud or of a systematic misuse of public funds belonging to Moroccans." The man expressing himself this way was called Eneko Landaburu. 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.! Of Spanish nationality, this distinguished man was a European by conviction and a well-respected diplomat. 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. At his post in Morocco since 2009, he managed, notably, the Advanced Status granted to the kingdom "at his request," which placed it in the position of being a privileged partner with Europe. Among the main advantages of this statute is the awarding of numerous kinds of financial aid.! ! The European generosity towards the Alawite kingdom did not happen overnight. Already under Hassan II, Brussels did not examine expenses very closely.131 Between 1977 and 1996, Morocco thus benefited from a little over one billion euros, of which 518 million were loans from the European Investment Bank. These funds were essentially intended to lift Moroccan rural areas out from under the underdeveloped state in which Hassan II had left them. But a portion of these sums actually was used to finance the dams constructed by Hassan II, allowing for irrigation of lands which he had periodically taken over.!

131 European neighborhood and partnership instrument, Morocco, Strategy Paper 2007 - 2013.

148

The second stage of the rapprochement between Europe and Morocco is defined by the implementation of Méda, the program which, from 1996 on, becomes the main instrument of expansion for the euro-mediterranean partnership. The objective: to help the countries of the south reform their economic and social structures. Financial aid thus jumps from 3,4 billion euros for the period 1995-1999, to 5,4 billion euros for 2000-2006. In other words, an increase of nearly 60%.! Baptized the National Indicative Program, and currently operated within the framework of Morocco's Advanced Status, this instrument unleashes a real explosion of financial aid. For the years 2011 to 2013 alone, Morocco should receive $748,670,850 in aid.132!

!

If we are to believe two top-level bureaucrats from the European Parliament in Strasbourg, who chose to speak on condition of anonymity, France runs a "discreet but efficient lobbying in favor of Morocco."133 Paris also knows how to show its generosity to its Moroccan friend. Essentially, the help goes through the AFD (Agence Française de Développement), a public organism under the aegis of different Ministers, among which is that of the Economy and Foreign Affairs.! Thus in 2009, $5176855 were released to Morocco ($509,431,500 in loans, $4,256,010 in subsidies, and $3,998,070 in shares. In 2010, French assistance sees a slight drop but still manages to reach $468,676,980.134 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. 133 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, November 2011. 134 AFD 2010 annual report.

149

The Predator-King. 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. Likewise, in the case of the AFD, it is impossible to know if the presence on the administration council of Omar Kabbaj, repeated economist but more importantly advisor to king Mohammed VI, influenced the decision of this venerable institution.! 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. Better than Iraq, which was at the height of it reconstruction and where French businesses would be able to claim major portion of the market. Moreover, the budgetary allocations and recent financial assistance by the AFD is perplexing. What in fact is targeted as a priority are the economic spheres that are of greatest interest to Mohammed VI. Sometimes on his own behalf. The most emblematic case (and the most highly contested) is the financing of a TGV line linking Casablanca and Tangiers on the Mediterranean where Mohammed VI constructed the largest port in Africa,Tanger Med.!

!

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. The two heads of state were quick to celebrate the indestructible Franco-Moroccan friendship, but they were careful not remind people that the budget for the royal TGV went, with the stroke of a magic wand, from two to three billion euros! And that was not the only slip-up.! This victory of the TGV is worthy of a banana republic. The story goes that Mohammed VI was looking to console France for the pur150

chase of American (not from Rafale) F16 fighter jets in 2007, by granting the TGV market to French firms. The reality is less grandiose. According to different sources, in agreement with each other, a genuine royal whim was said to have been at the origin of the TGV issue. "Mohammed VI wanted his high-speed train. That's it,"135 was the comment by a financier who followed the story closely.! 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. Still more astonishing, the 2010 edition of the annual report from this public enterprise shows that it was going to put into operation a high-speed link between Casablanca and Tangiers. 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." Now the question arises as to the justification for the TGV when this rapid connection on the books was already replicated by a spanking new highway…which was empty, since Moroccans preferred the national road which did not cost anything to use.! The indignation was widespread and crossed the board from islamists to the far left. Thus, for Najib Boulif, the islamist deputy of the PJD, since named to the post of Minister in charge of General Governmental Affairs, "Moroccans do not need to gain that much more time with the TGV. They are already gaining two hours on the Casablanca-Tangiers route and will spend that time at a sidewalk café. Rather, there should have been an investment in increasing the frequency of trains that already are running and doubling the number of tracks available instead of constructing a TGV, which is not the priority. It was not a unbiased choice responding to the people’s needs."136 Ahmed Derkaoui, head of the anti-globalization firm Attac,

135 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, December 2011. 136 Remarks obtained from Axel Tardieu, Tangiers 2011.

151

The Predator-King. 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."137! Even the usual investors in Morocco share the opinion of those objecting to the project, starting with the BEI which the kingdom nonetheless sought out on several occasions in order to finance the railroad whim of its sovereign. Rabat thus was a victim of its own game.! Indeed, part of the contract granted the French was done, by mutual agreement, without the slightest call for bids. The result: the Germans, and to a lesser extent the Spanish, who were also constructing high-speed trains, were absolutely furious. If what was admitted by Andres Martinez Fernandez himself, the man in charge of the Investment section of the Spanish Embassy in Rabat, the Spaniards, who were good sports, gave the go-ahead for financing by the BEI, then it was not the same for the Germans who held a deep-seated grudge.138! Just this once, the BEI finally thus refrained from subsidizing Mohammed VI's TGV. "It refused to grant a loan of 400 million euros, as Moroccans were requesting, for this train was not the project with the highest priority for developing the country. Moreover, financial analysts questioned the profitability of the project as much as the necessity of putting subsidized trains on the tracks," Eneko Ladaburu admitted. For its part, the BEI made it known that several months earlier, it had authorized payment of a loan totaling 200 million euros for the port of Tangiers Med 2, and that during these last 30 years, it had allocated no less than 4,5 billion euros to Morocco's projects!139!

!

137 Ibid. 138 Interview with one of the authors, Rabat, September 2011. 139 “TGV marocain; veto allemand,” Jeune Afrique, December 23, 2010.

152

Very embarrassed, the kingdom then turned towards France. What followed was told us by a consultant at AFD who wanted to remain anonymous. (His employer did not follow through on our calls for an interview.)! "Nicolas Sarkozy ordered Dov Zerah, the general manager of AFD, to give the money to the who absolutely wanted their TGV, and also because the kingdom would be an international showcase for this train. In any event, the AFD was undermined in its operation and became the financial arm of the Elysée in Africa,"140 he insisted. The result: a 220 million euro loan was granted to assist the financing of the Moroccan TGV.! 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. Aside from the AFD, the generous French contributors are the Reserve Fund for emerging countries142 (a loan of 625 million euros) and the FASEP143 (underwriting 75 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. According to the official Moroccan press agency, MAP, their rates were assumed to be between 1,2% and 3,6%, and the delays in reimbursing were laddered over five to 20 years…! Unable to subsidize the whim of their king beyond 500 million euros, Morocco appealed as well to Arab generosity, and diverse funds from the Persian Gulf advanced as much as 380 million euros. If only 140 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, December 2011. 141 www.ard.fr 142 La Réserve [the Reserve Fund] for emerging countries is a system of governmental loan se-

cured by a sovereign guarantee which has, as its principal objective, the financing of infrastructure projects. 143 FASEP: Fonds d’aide au secteur privé [Financial Aid to the Private Sector]

153

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

Mohammed VI devoted the same energy to financing the construction of schools and hospitals throughout his kingdom…! France was the fall-guy. 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.!

!

All For Free! The case of the Port of Tangiers Mediterranean, designed under the brand-label of Tanger Med, a real vacuum cleaner sucking up subsidies and financial aid, also warrants taking a closer look at. 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. Certain clues do not fool anyone as to his role, since he placed someone in whom he had great confidence at the head of the agency coordinating the project. 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.! No more than they could do so with the TGV, Morocco was not capable of paying the bill on Tanger Med. 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. Contrary to what happened with the TGV, the European Investment Bank (BEI) accepted to be part of the contributors for Tangiers, by way of one of its principal financial tools, the FEMIP (Facilité euro-méditerranéenne d'investissement et de partenariat). 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.! Considerable sums which raise a few questions. 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. Expected to open some time in 2014, the port is behind schedule. 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." A major stumbling block, which must have greatly annoyed Mohammed VI: His Majesty had made arrangements to take advantage of the operation…! To the great surprise of a good number of other stakeholders in Tanger Med, the royal holding company SNI, along with a group made up of Singapore representatives from the PSA company and Moroccans from the Marsa group, had in fact been given the operation of terminal 4 of Tanger Med 2. 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. Finally, the world crisis got the better of these ambitions. During 2008, Mohammed VI's holding company quietly withdrew from terminal 4, just as the Singapore-based PSA. The only one remaining, the Marsa company, then became the sole operator of the terminal in June 2009.!

!

! 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. That was the case with the steel manufacturer Sonasid (3.9 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%. According to the man in charge of human resources, Abdelmajid Tronji, "for Tanger Med 1, we sold 51,000 tons to sub-contractors of Bouygues Construction which built the port." At 6000 dirhams a ton on average, that represents 306 million dirhams for Sonasid. Of course, the presence 155

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

of SNI's capital did not weigh in the balance if we are to believe Tronji. "Our products correspond to international quality criteria. Moreover, we are very well set up commercially all over Morocco." Indeed.! Let us not forget that Lafarge Maroc, 50% owned by SNI and 50% by the French cement company Lafarge. The annual report for 2008 of this firm established for many years in Morocco speaks volumes: Tanger Med is a "major work-site" for the company, which supplied more than 600,000 tons of cement between 2003 and 2009. 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. These initiatives, very often financed by foreign countries, turn out to be quite profitable for the interests of the monarch.! The development of renewable energy is a major work project for another royal enterprise: Nareva.! Created in 2006 to play out the new sources of growth within the royal holding company ONA, Nareva was specialized in new sources of energy, the last gold-mine of Mohammed VI, following mass distribution, tourism, and real estate.! Right from the start, the firm (where no one answers the telephone) is fond of secrecy, and its officers politely declined requests from journalists. "I thank you for the interest you have in Nareva. 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. Might this discretion be reflecting an uneasiness on the part of Nareva's management? Indeed, it has been observed that driven by the impetus of Mohammed VI, Morocco quite suddenly is launched into the renewable energy industry and that Nareva 156

brings in important contracts in the wind power sector. The strategic choice of this form of energy is well-founded.! As opposed to its Algerian neighbor, the Moroccan sub-strata has neither gas nor oil, and the kingdom suffers from a high dependance on outside energy. To move towards new sources of energy, based on wind and sun is perfectly logical. It is even estimated that in the long run, relying on solar and wind energy together will save the equivalent of 2,5 million tons of petrol. Or, put differently, $1.25 billion in savings annually, et nine million tons of carbon dioxide which will not be released into the atmosphere.144!

!

These projects, conceived at the national level, are all led by men chosen by the king. It is in this way that solar and wind power projects came to fruition. 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. This plan was launched with all the pomp befitting a sovereign, in the presence of the American Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, on November 2, 2009 in Ouarzazate, in the south of the kingdom.! 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. Thus in July 2011, the French Agency for Development (AFD), still the same one, announced that it was underwriting the project with funds of 100,3 million euros for Masen (100 million euros in loans and 300,000 euros in subsidies).146!

144 Blog Green Business, accessible at the following address: blog.lefigaro.fr/green-business. 145 Masen, www.masen.org.ma 146 Press release from the AFD July 8, 2011.

157

The Predator-King. 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. Intellectually we are ready."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.! For once, the local press put forward an attempt at explanation for what appeared to be a smokescreen: Nareva supposedly had eyes bigger than its stomach! "Nareva, which in 2010 had inaugurated two projects amounting to a 1600 megawatt capacity, allegedly did not have the finances necessary for a third power facility. Nareva will have to start up the two power facilities it already owns before claiming to do anything else."!

!

Fortunately, the SNI-ONS branch could count of the wind farm industry to make up the difference, for in this field as well, Mohammed VI has big plans and immense ambition. Thus, in June 2010, the monarch inaugurates a Moroccan Program that included wind power, endowed with funding of $3,5 million. On the menu: five new wine farms designed to increase Moroccan electric wind power from 280 megawatts to 2000 megawatts.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. A blessing for Nareva, which had a special relationship with the strategic public organism concerned with anything relating to energy. 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. 148 Ibid.

158

Majidi's pawns, the loyal Ali Fassi Fihri. Better yet, the current CEO of Nareva, Ahmed Nakkouch, had managed ONE for a long time, and who knew perfectly its politics…of renewable energies.! 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. Its 61 windmills will generate 100 megawatts, that essentially service private manufacturers within the framework of an energy program for….ONE.! Another major wind energy project by Nareva in which ONE was a key player: the wind farm in Tarfaya, in Morocco's deep south, whose power goes as high as 200 megawatts. 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. In order to keep distance competitors to the royal enterprise at a distance, namely GDF-Suez, ONE allegedly claimed that the last public offering had been under-capitalize. 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 King Sells His Electricity…to The Moroccan Citizens! That Nareva had indirect access to public monies is not exactly a surprise either. The subsidiary of SNI-ONA is used to this. Some public operations thus already had announced, through the press, that part of the wind energy produced by Nareva (which turns over a monthly fee to ONE) would be sold to seven industrial clients. However, with one exception, they all maintained business relationships

149 “BP et AWB financent l’éolien de Tarfaya,” Les Échos (Maroc), April 27, 2011.

159

The Predator-King. 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).! The car of ONEP (water) is, strictly speaking, a scandal. 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. While the Palace tries to cover up the monopolies of SNI-ONA, still too numerous for a traditional economy, we are in the exact opposite situation with Nareva and wind power,"151 an observer knowledgeable in the economic maneuvering of the Palace analyzes in the summer of 2010. But the biggest surprise is yet to come.! ! Indeed, several months later, in November 2010, Nareva announces what constitutes its greatest economic success to date: Safi's coal power plant, whose stakes are huge since, long-term, it provides 27% of Morocco's electrical consumption. 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. It might be noted, in passing, that in order to carry it off despite the Franco-Chinese consortium of EDF and Datang, Nareva once again joined up with the British International Power (IP), thus also indirectly with GDF-Suez which had, in the meanwhile, bought back IP. And while EDF was try-

150 “Nareva Holding devient fournisseur indépendant d’électricité,” La Vie éco, April 26, 2010. 151 Interview with one of the authors, Casablanca 2011.

160

ing to digest this cover-up, Nareva could delight in being assured of a captive market with ONE, which became its main client.! With yet a bit more effort and this promising branch of SNI-ONA would doubtless end up hooking an important contract in solar energy and by positioning itself as the single Moroccan player in the kingdom's renewable energy domain. Royal destiny, one could argue.!

! ! ! XIII. The King Preys on The People !

!

A charity ball given by Moroccan business owners to help reintegrate young delinquents back into society. Industrialists, bankers, politicians were all crowding into the room where the auction was to be held in order to be present at the highlight of the event: a watch given by Mohammed VI, which would be put up to bid in a few minutes. The auctioneer's gavel moved in function of the hands raised to bid. In a back corner of the room, a man whose forehead glistened with perspiration seemed to be relating in low undertones how the sale was unfolding, a cell phone glued to his ear. All those present recognized Mounir Majidi. Mohammed VI's personal secretary was there to inform the king the price at which his watch would be sold and to let him know who the buyer was. 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. In sum, to measure the extent of the current "sycophant mentality." !

!

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. This was a prejudice 161

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

he inherited from his father. During the tumultuous 1960s and 1970s, it must be pointed out that the Moroccan upper class had been one of the most ferocious adversaries of the monarchy. Hassan II held a deep grudge against them, which he passed on to his son. And it is highly probably that this royal claim to controlling the economy was fed by a desire to punish the world of business.! 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. Mohammed VI pushes the vanity card just as far by claiming to put himself in the position of economic and financial leaders. 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.! An example. 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. A genuine misappropriation of public money in order to profit a social marketing campaign. Buyers of stamps, like businessmen, who rush to auctions such as the one mentioned before, know that they have no choice. As a State-level manager summed it up: "In Morocco, when there is a price to pay, it is the government who has to take care of it; when there is recognition to be had, it is the king and to his foundations that reap the benefits."! 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. The toll was more than 600 dead, and Mohammed VI pitched his tent for several days at the scene of the dramatic event. That image, that the country and the world will retain, is however, a far cry from the reality. In the course of the first few hours, while the Interior Minister Driss Jettou was busy on the airport tarmac coordinating rescue efforts, the president of the Mohammed Vi Foundation passed the order to halt all aid in order to allow the Foundation to be the first

162

on the ground to assist in the effort. Help to the population was delayed for 24 hours. Protocol before efficiency.!

!

"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. A witness who knows the Palace well considers that, this time, the limits have been exceeded: "The monopolization of the economy in favor of the royal family," he declares, "is smothering the country. Certain people in management share the analysis of the February 20th Movement: this can't go on any longer." But, a prisoner of his whims and of his advisors, who shore up an impenetrable outside wall between him and the world, Mohammed VI is unaware of his critics, or prefers to ignore them.! 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. Its objective: conceal the king's economic power from the overly curious and enable him to get out of any form of control.! 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. Discretion that is all the more surprising when you know that the total stock capitalization of the ONA, the SNI and their branches exceeds 30 billion dirhams.! Moreover, if the rumor of a merger circulated for nearly three years, its implementation ended up surprising everyone. Indeed, contrary to what they were all expecting, it was the giant ONA that was absorbed by its holding company SNI, far more modest and without much in the way of financial resources. At the time of the merger, it carried a net debt of 8.8 billion dirhams, which represents 98% of its own funds,152 152 Fahd Iraqi, “SNI-ONA...et autres sociétés royales,” TelQuel, no. 425.

163

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

and it showed a negative reserve of 600 million dirhams. 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.!

!

On March 25, 2010, the administration council of the ONA, having planned it for a long time, was ready to open its session. The usual council members, taken by surprise, noted the presence of Mounir Majidi and Hassan Bouhemou. The announcement that would be made will astound all those participating in the meeting. The ONA was about to be absorbed by its parent company, the SNI. No one had been informed prior to this decision, and especially not the CEO of the ONA, who will make pathetic attempts to convince people he had known all along.! 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. The announcement of the upcoming merger is made official by a communiqué in the beginning of the afternoon.! 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. Furthermore, the finance law voted for 2010 lightened the tax burden for mergers or absorption of companies.! 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. And this transaction is supposed to have cost the royal group nearly 24 billion dirhams, had the traditional foreign partners not spontaneously appeared to lighten the financial load of the bill. Lafarge, Danone, Axa, Banco Santander thus all participated around the table, not by investing but by maintaining their continuing equity. It was a kind of cooperation described by the 164

royal entourage as exemplary, but which continued to annoy those in Paris. A French official close to the case thus brings up the "illusion of a French presence. Morocco," he says, "will no longer be a gold mine for French business, which will be subject, from now on, to pressure from those surrounding the king."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. It is equally clear that the new mastodon about to be born will be the unavoidable negotiating partner for all those foreign investors seeking to position themselves in Morocco. 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. It will also be able, in this way, to freely invest where it chooses, create new entities without having to reveal the nature or the extent of its acquisitions. From now on, the royal octopus will be able to stretch out its tentacles without being seen. The only mystery: how was the Palace's part of this transaction financed?!

!

Two Billion Euros! The choices made to enact this merger point out stunning realities. Siger, the royal holding company created in January 2002, would belong exclusively to Mohammed VI and would control 50% of the ONA. Another near-empty shell: SAR Invest. 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. Its extension, Group Invest, was one of the initiators of the public issuer bids, that involved acquiring nearly eight million SNIONA securities. But it had only an extremely modest operating capital

153 Interview with one of the authors, Paris, November 2011.

165

The Predator-King. 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. This fund purchased in 2003 by Ergis, another holding company belonging to the king, was chosen to own the capital of the new group and to supervise its oversight.! To sum it up, this merger had been conceived as a veritable series of absorptions of the largest by the smallest. The giant ONA is absorbed by the modest SNI, and the new ensemble is, in turn, sucked up by a minuscule entity unknown to everyone, Copropar, 40% owned by four funds smacking of offshore connections: Providence holding SA, Unihold holding SA, Yano Participation and Star Finance, whose owners are impossible to identify.155! Copropar is an impressively empty shell: it has no employees, while at the same time it is supposed to raise 7.7 billion dirhams to acquire 37% of SNI's capital, which will be its only shareholdings. A sum three times greater than the sum of its own funds….owned by unknown shareholders.! On December 31, 2010, the merger is finalized and Hassan Bouhemou heads the new ensemble whose operation remains completely opaque. The rare information that seeps out from the Palace indicates that the king allegedly controls nearly 70% of the new group.! 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.! Another interesting point: in order to enact the merger, the SNI had been granted permission to raise eight billion dirhams at the mandatory market rate over a period of five years. Moroccan banks were all 154 Ibid. 155 Ibid.

166

"authorized" by the central bank to grant additional credits to the new ensemble. On top of that, the retirement funds were asked to maintain their shareholding level. These demands would be met without resistance, obviously. But it is, at the very least, strange to observe that the retirement funds hold shares in unlisted companies.! 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. Summing up, once again, the king tapped into public and para-public funding. 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. Indeed, certain sectors of the economy had become too politically sensitive, notably when royal companies are in a quasi-monopolistic situation while at the same time benefiting from massive subsidies by the Moroccan State. 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. It seemed wiser, then, to look to regulated activities such as banks, energy, or telecommunication.! Sectors where the capacity to generate profits is not weighed down by competition and derives from serious negotiations with the State.! It is in this way that the Moroccan government and administration grant increasingly more dispensations to Mohammed VI's businesses, when 32 million Moroccans are not only subjects of the sovereign but also his clients: electricity, telephones, food, etc. are all supplied by his companies. A clever and insidious form of what some called the "new royal tax." It was an economic system not "state-run" but in a way, "royal-run."!

167

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

Morocco is definitely a unique case. Most of its leaders plunder their country by seizing the wealth of the people. 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.!

! ! !

Epilogue: A Silent And Guilty France!

!

On Friday November 25, 2011, legislative elections unfolded calmly in Morocco. 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. "Even if the PJD gets a majority, we will not manage to form a government because the other parties will refuse to collaborate with us and, failing to reach a consensus, the king will get a new Prime Minister156," explained one of them.! 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. For it is widespread public knowledge that Mohammed VI and his advisor, Fouad Ali El Himma, have a deep aversion towards islamists.! 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. This political background is independent in name only since, when it was created by Hassan II in the 1970s, it always was subservient to the monarchy. It has been said that L'Observateur, a Moroccan publication, prepared a headline 156 Interview with one of the authors, Rabat, September 2011.

168

page announcing the arrival of Mézouar as head of the government… That is not counting Mohammed VI's last minute change of course. 48 hours after the official victory announcement of the islamists from the PJD, the king asks Abdelilah Benkirane to form a new government.! ! This Islamist was seen by most observers in Morocco as a personality who was difficult to pin down and ambiguous. 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 Palace was well aware that the choice of Benkirane as Prime MInister presented no risk. 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. Benikrane was, in reality, advanced by the makhzen, and the royal power was about to empower his party the with the same ease as had once been shown to the party of the left, the USFP. 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.!

!

98% "Yes" Votes!! This about-face by Mohammed VI put a temporary end to the hesitations and tension caused by the revolts in the Arab world that the king was struggling to understand. 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. The internet site Rue89 forwards

169

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

the news157, specifying that "Mohammed VI is said to have gone there very discreetly" and "without his family." From one side to the other of the Mediterranean, people are talking about the fear felt by the sovereign that the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions were contaminating his kingdom….! That would be the case however, as the protest movement that began on February 20, 2011 would show, but with much less intensity. From that date on, at regular intervals, thousands of non-violent protestors went to the streets putting forth diverse demands: liberation of political prisoners of conscience, free elections, a parliamentary monarchy patterned after Spain or Great Britain, fight against corruption, a more equal distribution of wealth…! The absence of leader as much as the different, wide-ranging demands, prevented Morocco from falling into the revolutionary mode. It was a diversity that also characterized the political sensitivities of the demonstrators. Among them, until December 2011, were (numerous) islamists from the Movement of Justice and Spirituality, unauthorized but tolerated, seen as the most powerful in the country, militants from the extreme left who were in favor of a lay state, and independent "cyber-activists."! 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. But it was Mohammed VI's attitude that gave rise to worry and indignation. Confronting the crisis, his lack of a political sense and his hesitations were shown in the clear light of day. Using a militaristic tone, his then declared on Monday February 21, 2011, that he would not give in "to demagoguery and improvisation," in order to reverse himself on March 9 and announce a "major constitutional reform" which he would submit as a referendum….! 157 Pierre Haski, “Le discret voyage du roi du Maroc dans son château de l’Oise,”

www.rue89.com, January 29, 2011.

170

As we would have expected, the new Constitution, made public in June, responded to none of what was expected by the protesters. 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. He holds the upper hand on the totality of religious and military affairs, presides over the Council of Ministers, decides every high-level public and administrative nomination, defines the strategic orientations of the country and chooses the text of the laws submitted to the Parliament. 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." It was an affront that showed the disdain in which the Palace held the people. A disdain that Mohammed VI will make a point of showing many times over in the months that follow.! On July 1, 2011, Moroccans are called to vote in the framework of a referendum intended to validate the new Constitution. 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 frightful tally worthy of North Korea, which causes indignation and taunting. A tally that, especially, betrayed both the worry that invaded the Palace and the lack of will to move the system towards democracy.!

!

At the beginning of the month of December 2011, Mohammed VI rushes to name 28 ambassadors, who in turn also hasten to be sworn into office. The new government of the islamist Benkirane is in the process of being formed, and these nominations look like a rape….of the new Constitution. 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. Along with the name of Mounir Majidi, that of El 171

The Predator-King. 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. In addition, wasn't El Himma directly responsible for the electoral failure of the political party created by the king, the famous PAM, that he ran until May 2011? But it is true that in Morocco incompetence is often rewarded, so long as it is countered by blind loyalty.! That nomination, which came exclusively from Mohammed VI, was only the tip of the iceberg. Since the referendum of July 1, 2011, the sovereign discreetly strengthened his royal cabinet, which until then had five members and from then on is linked to a "counter-government" of nearly 10 members. 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.! On November 29, 2011, the very day on which Mohammed VI asked Abdelilah Benkirane to form a government, the Palace announced the arrival of a new advisor. 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. On December 6, it was the tourism minister's turn, Yassir Zenagui, to have this honor. 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.!

!

France: Deaf, Dumb, And Blind! By constituting a veritable parallel government in order to oppose and humiliate the new Prime Minister that he named, Mohammed VI demonstrates his political immaturity. 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. These disturbing signals hardly made a dent in France's enthu172

siasm for Morocco, seen as a stable kingdom. 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. In reality, the Palace was sending contradictory signals. To everyone's surprise, in February 2012, a royal pardon was bestowed on such diverse personalities as radical islamists, the boxer Zakaria Moumni, et….the ex-banker Khalid Oudghiri to whom we referred at length earlier.! 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. In September 2011, when work on the TGV kicked off in Tangiers, in the presence of Mohammed VI, Nicolas Sarkozy declared the following: "France has had numerous occasions to show the extent to which she acknowledged the vision expressed by the king; how much she takes pleasure in the exceptional success of the referendum concerning the Constitution and Morocco's continuing advances towards democracy."! 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. JeanDavid Lévitte, the diplomatic advisor at the Elysée, held forth however, that "of the three countries in the Maghreb, Tunisia [was] the one with which we [maintain] the most peaceful relations." 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….! In reality, Franco-Moroccan relations have become pointless. Paris and Rabat scarcely hold any interest for each other. The Moroccan regime is distancing itself inexorably from Paris, without, in so doing, making sure it has another support system. Rabat is slowly drifting in the direction of the Persian Gulf, while the French élite is taking less

173

The Predator-King. Plundering Morocco

comfort in Marrakech. The networks woven under Hassan II have faded away and have not been replaced.! In the end, France's mechanical support of Morocco translates the loss of influence that Paris had in Africa. Taking after the U.S. during the 1970s, which attempted to support the Shah of Iran while the early stages of ayatollah Khomeini's revolution were being felt.! But contrary to the Americans, who in general learned the lessons of their failures, France, often arrogant and stuck in its immobility, brings to mind the three monkeys in the proverb, who "see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil."! 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. In Morocco, the situation is of still greater concern. While the diplomats from the U.S. 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.!

!

! !










! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

!

! ! 174