A French official in ITGA Company gets 18 months in prison by Algiers criminal court

Algiers-A French official in ITGA Company was sentenced Monday to eighteen months in prison for illegally obtaining a contract with the Algerian oil company Sonatrach, APS reported here on Tuesday.

 Michel André Howard, head of the French company ITGA was sentenced by Algiers criminal court which acquitted two senior Algerian officials of Sonatrach on the same charges.

 Mr. Howard denied the facts alleged against him, claiming to have won the contract legally and that his company was not fictitious.

 The two Algerian officials were charged with embezzlement of public money (over 1.3 b DA/13 m Euros) and awarding a public contract on behalf of the state, same source reported.

 Prosecutors said the two executives of Sonatrach, Brahim Cherif and Kherour Mohamed Bensmail worked in the engineering and construction service of the oil company and led the commission of open bids responsible for awarding contracts.

 Both defendants have granted a contract to ITGA, which is actually just a consulting firm which does not meet eligibility criteria. They had disclosed the content of such submissions.

 The transaction involves the completion of life base, social and administrative facilities, including 33 buildings and three villas, designed to accommodate some 407 executives of Sonatrach in Ain Amenas, south of Algeria.     

Previously on May, Michel André Howard has started hunger strike for two weeks in Serkadji prison, in upper Algiers.

 Michel Howard Andre was serving a 4-year sentence over charges of funds embezzlement and giving bribes to snatch the deal of installing a compound for Sonatrach in the south of Algeria. 

Algiers Criminal Court has convicted the two Sonatrach officials to 7 years in the same case, after charging them of corruption and facilitating the French company to snatch the deal. 

To recall, the defense attorney of Howard Michel has required the court to summon his client’s former partner Jean Jacque Vandeville to give his witness on the case. 

Despite being the blower up of the case, Jean Jacques Vandeville, who lives in France, declines each time the judge’s summon to attend the trial. Defendant Howard Michel considers Vandoville as “a mere stealer who seeks revenge.”