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The former president of Mauritania Mohamed Ould Abdelaziz was arrested this Monday afternoon in the framework of a judicial investigation for several cases of corruption and embezzlement of public funds that were uncovered by a report from a parliamentary investigation commission. Abdelaziz, who spent the night at the General Directorate of National Security (DGSN), is being questioned by the police.
The former president's arrest occurred around 5 p.m. on Monday after he refused to go to the police station for questioning. At that time, security agents came to his home in Nouakchott and took him away in detention. Since then he has been at the DGSN headquarters giving a statement. During the parliamentary investigation, which led to the dismissal of the entire Government, several of his former ministers identified him as the head of the alleged criminal acts.
Abdelaziz's arrest is the latest chapter in the rift between the current president, Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, in office for a year, and his predecessor. Both were comrades in arms in the army, joined in the military coup that ended a brief democratic experiment in 2008 and were close collaborators during the 11 years that Abdelaziz was president. Ghazouani came to occupy the posts of Chief of the Defense Staff and minister of the branch and was later elected successor to the presidency. However, a few weeks after winning the elections, relations between the two began to deteriorate.
Abdelaziz's rudeness to his former dolphin reached a point of no return when he attempted to seize control of the government party, the Union for the Republic, which Ghazouani interpreted as an attempt to mark his way as president. Last January, the head of state endorsed the creation of a parliamentary inquiry commission unprecedented in the history of Mauritania to shed light on the corruption of the Abdelaziz regime between 2008 and 2019.
The parliamentarians focused on a dozen cases of various kinds, from irregular hiring, opaque sale of public land and concessions that did not respect the control procedures established by law. The ministers summoned to the aforementioned commission, both from the current Government and from the Abdelaziz era, pointed to the former president as the maximum responsible and who made all the decisions. During the process, his attempt to give an island to the then emir of Qatar without going through any control of the Government or the National Assembly came to light.
Abdelaziz refused to testify before the commission, but the final report was transferred by the deputies to Justice who quickly got down to work and began to question high-ranking officials and ministers, who confirmed to the prosecutor that the former president was responsible for everything. In recent days, the police seized numerous vehicles belonging to Abdelaziz and ordered the closure of the premises of a related political party as the siege tightened around him.
