Air Algérie Lost $1M In Suspicious Deals

Investigations into corruption cases registered within the Air Algérie company are continuing, after the dismissal of the Transport Minister and the former General Manager by the President of the Republic, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, more than a month ago due to “poor management”.

This time, a file was opened for the deals of maintenance with aircraft spare parts, which recorded many overruns in supplier selection and deal-making processes that cost the company $ 1 million between 2011 and 2015.

According to official documents, that were obtained by Echorouk, the Directorate of Maintenance at the level of the Air Algérie recorded illegal violations, breaches, huge financial loopholes and inflating bills at the level of the price study committee for foreign markets for the purchase of spare parts and engines, in addition to recording inflated bills by officials in the maintenance base who were at the head of the department, which included more than 30 officials who are under investigation today by the investigation teams in an embezzlement case involving “M.K” and “B.Mohamed”, where the first served as head of the external procurement department and the second was deputy director of the warehouses’ department.

According to the same source, the case also involved 28 other officials of various qualities in the purchase of aircraft spare parts, which acquisition costs amounted to fictional sums in addition to an inflated billing case.

The investigations include the period between 2011 and 2015, and the first case exploded after the report presented by Ben Chiheb Mohamed, an official in the Foreign Purchase Study Committee, against the president of the Foreign Purchase Authority against the president of the Air Algérie Maintenance Unit at the time.

The filed report included a record of the details of the abuses during the acquisition of aircraft spare parts, represented in the award of the deal to “AJ Walter”, a European company that produces aircraft parts, by mutual consent, instead of choosing in a public tender between 3 other suppliers, where the concerned person received an inquiry from Masaadi Aouatef, Deputy Director of collectables asking for clarifications about the reason for awarding the deal to the concerned company without adopting a price comparison table, knowing that the selected company committed to providing the orders within 18 weeks, while the owners of other offers committed themselves to provide them within a period of fewer than 4 weeks, which is AJW Company, and the value of the deal in which “M.K” was involved was equal to 179,700 US dollars, and the Air Algérie Company suffered losses in hard currency.

The report that Benchihab Mohamed submitted to the head of the maintenance department confirmed that several violations were detected in the operations and deals of the acquisition of equipment, including the failure to respect the laws and procedures for the purchase of aircraft spare parts, whether concerning the selection of suppliers or delivery times and even prices, and despite the notification of some officials of these violations but things remained the same in the company, and officials did not move a finger, and that was during the era of the former General Manager of Air Algérie, Mohamed Saleh Boultif, who did not receive any notification of these violations from the head of the maintenance unit department.

Besides, no complaints were filed with the security services of Houari Boumediene Airport in these cases, which deals exceeded $ 1 million – equivalent to DZD 17 billion-, according to the parallel market price, after that the concerned person filed a complaint at the Gendarmerie Department for Research and Investigation in Cheraga, Algiers, which ordered gendarmes to move to Air Algérie maintenance base and investigated with 30 officials there, and the file was recently reopened at the level of Air Algérie company.