The court also confirmed, Thursday, the international arrest warrant issued against Chakib Khelil, who was prosecuted for “dilapidation of public funds during the conclusion of markets with foreign companies”.
mo12345lemonde with AFP
The former energy minister Chakib Khelil, in post for ten years under the presidency of Abdelaziz Bouteflika, was again sentenced on Thursday January 19, in absentia, to twenty years in prison for corruption, According to the official agency APS .
The Sidi M’hamed court in Algiers also sentenced other former senior officials to sentences ranging from five to ten years in prison. It is the former Minister of Public Works, Amar Ghoul, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohamed Bedjaoui, and two former bosses of the public giant of Sonatrach hydrocarbons, Noureddine Bouterfa and Abdelmoumen Ould Kaddour. >
Payment of occult commissions
They were prosecuted for “dilapidation of public funds during the conclusion of markets with foreign companies”. The court also confirmed the international arrest warrant issued against Mr. Khelil.
In 2013, the Algerian justice had issued an international arrest warrant against Mr. Khelil in the context of an investigation into the payment of occult commissions by a subsidiary of the Italian giant Eni for obtaining contracts in Algeria, scandal which has been the subject of several trials in Italy and Algeria.
Refugee in the United States, he had returned in 2016 to Algeria after the abandonment of the prosecution against him, before leaving abroad when the procedure had been relaunched after the fall of Bouteflika on April 2, 2019 under pressure of the Hirak and army protest movement.