Basketball Federation Embezzlement: Convictions After 10 Years

The Criminal Chamber of First Instance responsible for financial crimes ruled, on the evening of the Monday before last, the prosecution case relating to significant financial embezzlement having marked the budget of the Royal Moroccan Basketball Federation, almost ten years ago. The court handed down its judgments against the people involved in this case, prosecuted while at liberty, the first of whom include the former president of the federation, its treasurer as well as an official reporting to the Ministry of Youth and attached to the federation.

Justice thus sentenced the former president of the federation, the main defendant in this case, to two years in prison accompanied by a fine of 5,000 dirhams, reports the daily Al Akhbar in its edition of this Wednesday, January 21. The treasurer, for his part, received a one-year suspended prison sentence, accompanied by the same fine. The court also ordered the two defendants jointly and severally to pay civil compensation for the benefit of the civil party, in the amount of 6 million dirhams. On the other hand, the third accused, an official at the Ministry of Youth, was acquitted of the charges against him.

During the hearing, the court presented in detail the conclusions of the accounting expertise carried out over the period concerned, in the presence of defense lawyers, the representative of the public prosecutor’s office as well as the legal representative of the supervisory department, which had become a civil party in this case, indicates Al Akhbar. This expertise, described as thorough, focused on the budget of the federation during the period covered by the complaint, which reported suspicions of embezzlement and squandering of significant public funds intended for the support and development of basketball in Morocco.

The affair became known in 2016, following inspection and audit operations relating to the finances of the federation and the subsidies which had been granted to it by the Ministry of Youth and Sports almost ten years earlier. These controls revealed irregularities and financial overruns considered serious, which the former heads of sports management within the federation had not been able to justify. The investigations revealed expenses exceeding 25 million dirhams, incurred without being duly included in clear budget lines or attached to legally defined expenditure items.

This situation had placed those directly responsible for payment operations, approval of bank transfers and collection of advertising revenue under serious suspicion, leading the prosecution to take over the case. The investigation was entrusted to the financial brigade of the Rabat police headquarters, which had carried out in-depth investigations on the basis of a complaint filed by the former Minister of Youth and Sports, Mohamed Amine Sbaiti, as well as by a member of the management office of the Ittihad basketball club in Tangier.

Following the conclusions delivered by the judicial police, the accused were presented before the public prosecutor’s office, then before the investigating judge of the second Chamber of the financial crimes unit., recalls Al Akhbar. The investigators also heard the legal representative of the supervisory ministry as well as the deputy president then at the head of the federation. The in-depth investigation mainly focused on significant financial subsidies paid by the ministry to the federation’s account, for an amount of around three billion centimes, and which were the subject of the 2016 audit.

The inspection commissions had noted dysfunctions described as serious, resulting in significant discrepancies between the allocated budgets and the data appearing in the accounting and financial reports, as well as in the moral reports. The investigators also noted the absence of conclusive supporting documents concerning the areas of expenditure, the identity of the recipients of checks and the sums paid in cash, according to the incriminating elements placed in the file.