Algeria: new convictions for former officials of the Bouteflika era

Former Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal and the former director of protocol of the Algerian presidency under Abdelaziz Bouteflika, Mokhtar Reguieg, already imprisoned, were sentenced to prison terms on Monday January 24 for acts of corruption, according to the official APS agency.

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Prosecuted with other co-defendants in the so-called “Metidji agro-food group” case, Abdelmalek Sellal and Mokhtar Reguieg were respectively sentenced to five and six years in prison.

Mansour Metidji, the former CEO of the agrifood group of the same name, was sentenced to 8 years in prison in the same case.

Abdelmalek Sellal, already convicted in several cases, had led the government from 2014 to 2017 and led the four electoral campaigns of ex-president Abdelaziz Bouteflika, ousted from power in 2019 and died on September 17, 2021. Career diplomat appointed in 2005 , Mokhtar Reguieg had been director of protocol for the Algerian presidency under the last three terms of Bouteflika, who was president for twenty years (1999-2019).

After the fall of Bouteflika on April 2, 2019 under the pressure of demonstrations by the pro-democracy movement Hirak and the army, the justice system launched a series of investigations into the cases in which the men around him were involved.

Several former senior politicians as well as powerful businessmen have been sentenced, in particular for acts of corruption.

Algeria ranks 104th out of 180 countries in the world ranking of the corruption perception index published in January 2021 by the NGO Transparency International.