Anti-Corruption Law: Media Must Declare Funding Sources To Avoid Extortion
Experts and specialists in law and anti-corruption valued President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s insistence to keep the written and online press away from all forms of exploitation through the necessity of declaring funding sources, and unanimously agreed that this step is part of an effort to keep the media sector from falling into the quagmire of bargaining and extortion by internal and external parties that want to strike the interests of the state.
The recent cabinet meeting had guided the government, during the presentation of the draft law on the written and online press, to a more comprehensive organization of the field of written and online journalism, through this law, to keep it away from all forms of exploitation, while authorizing the sources of funding.
On the matter, lawyer Mouenis Lakhdari Echorouk that the President’s instructions are in order, given that the sources of funding for the written and online press must be visible because the media sector is an investment and a profit, adding that the financing of any party must be public, official and without conditions, restricting or interfering directly or indirectly in the editorial line of the media or the journalist’s mission.
Lakhdari explained that; “The transfer of funds to finance a media, whatever it is written, audio, visual or online, from any party, whether it is a businessman or an economic institution, must be done transparently through official and legitimate means and under the supervision of the accounts’ governor, and the financing must not be through what is known as the “suitcase”, so to speak, which makes things take other curves through the financier or the contributor to the funding exercising pressure or diverting the line of the media, while if the apparent funding is unconditional, the matter becomes like other investments”.
For his part, a source from within one of the anti-corruption bodies confirmed to Echorouk; “At the beginning of the liberation of the media sector, there was a special allocation account from the public treasury to finance and support the press in the form of a loan, to be returned later to the same entity, but since years, the phenomenon of hidden and indiscriminate funding of the media began to spread, which contributed greatly to harming the country’s higher interests and influencing government programs, especially those that are funded from abroad, and secondly by exploiting this sector as a cover to disguise the controlling bodies to transfer funds abroad and launder them through the purchase of the real estate, property, etc”.
“Perhaps the corruption files presented to the judicial authorities, especially to the economic and financial penal pole, have proven that many businessmen who are prosecuted on such files have a relationship with the media sector, similar to the hidden funding of the “El-Istimrarya” (continuity) channel, the file in which the brother of the late president, “Said Bouteflika” and his special adviser are prosecuted, along with the former chairman of the Forum of Heads of Institutions, Ali Haddad, who financed this channel, in addition to the prosecution of the businessman Mohieddine Tahkout with the misdemeanour of money laundering and the transfer of funds allocated for media activity to another destination, and the file of corruption of businessmen “Aissiou” brothers who have no link with media but they invested in “El-Djazairia One” tv channel to smuggle, transfer and launder money under the pretext of media activity”, the same source explained.
On this basis, the anti-corruption specialist called for the necessity to impose strict control by the Bank of Algeria on all sources of funding related to media activity, by activating the bank’s inspectorate, which will impose its rapid oversight mechanisms to find out the sources of funding within limited deadlines.
