American Justice “buries” Chakib Khelil file

The Secretary-General of the National anti-corruption organization Mr Halim Fadhel has affirmed that the American justice has suspended cooperation on the issue of follow-up legal proceedings against former Algerian energy and mines minister Chakib Khelil, stressing that his organization’s goal is to bring Chakib Khelil before justice on charges of widespread corruption practices while he was in office.

He also revealed that his anti-corruption organization had received an invitation from the US Embassy in Algiers which proposed the funding of the organization and its activities, a proposal he rejected outright, he underscored.

He further explained how his national anti-corruption organization had requested from the non-governmental organization “Transparency International” its assistance to recover assets and money and looted funds transferred to the United States by Chakib Khelil and his accomplices among his inner circle but so far to no avail, because this NGO does not have a representation in Algeria, and even its members are forbidden from entering Algeria, as he put it.

On the Italian judicial side however, an examining magistrate at the Italian court of Milan has recently questioned the former manager of Saipem Algeria, Tulio Orsi, with the aim of collecting incriminating evidence against former Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Khelil for direct involvement in corruption practices in the conclusion of lucrative hydrocarbons’ deals between Saipem and Algeria’s oil and gas company Sonatrach.

Italian judicial sources said that the examining magistrate in charge of the preliminary investigations, Alfonsa Ferraro, was informed by the witness during the latest hearing that Chakib Khelil had met at a Paris hotel with former Saipem’s executive manager Paolo Scaroni to conclude shady deals including colossal grafts estimated at several million Euros to the detriment of Saipem and Sonatrach companies.

Tulio Orsi also reportedly told the Italian judge that Chakib Khelil was accompanied during the Paris encounter with Paolo Scaroni by his right-hand man, namely Farid Bedjaoui, who also conducted several other dubious missions abroad on behalf of Chakib Khelil who is now wanted by both the Algerian and Italian justice over widespread corruption charges alongside other members of his inner circle including Farid Bedjaoui himself.

Farid Bedjaoui, an Algerian consultant who was educated in Montreal and occasionally resides there, is suspected of being a conduit for more than $200-million in suspicious payments, possibly bribes, from multiple multinational corporations in the oil and gas services sector, a joint investigation by The Globe and Mail and Il Sole 24 Ore, Italy’s business newspaper, has found.

Sources close to the investigations in Europe and Canada believe that SNC and the Italian oil services firm Saipem SpA relied on Farid Bedjaoui, the nephew of former Algerian foreign affairs minister Mohammed Bedjaoui, to obtain contracts from Sonatrach.

Farid Bedjaoui is one of several foreign agents hired by SNC who have fallen under suspicion for allegedly paying bribes.

He has been close with Algeria’s former energy minister, Chakib Khelil, who left his post in 2010 in a corruption scandal within Algeria. Italian investigators have detailed in court documents that Mr. Bedjaoui reportedly accompanied the former Algerian energy minister to a meeting in Paris with the chief executive of ENI SpA. The executive, Paolo Scaroni, told the Italian media Mr. Bedjaoui was introduced at the meeting as Mr. Chakib Khelil’s “special secretary.”