Cops Receive Bribes To Allow Foreign Nationals Return To Their Countries After Illegal Stay In Algeria

Algiers Dar Bida court heard, on Monday morning, a number of foreign nationals in Algeria, who were illegally residing, including Turks and Chinese, after they were involved in the scandal of bribing police officers in the services of foreigners at Algiers security headquarters in exchange for facilitating their passage to their countries of origin, without trial or judicial rulings for exceeding the time allowed in documents they had obtained through multinational companies, after the expiry of the period of construction projects, and in order to facilitate their return they were granted traffic licenses and records for the illegal departure from the national territory by the accused, in exchange for bribes ranging from DZD 30.000 to 40.000, as a Chinese girl who worked as a translator for the security services interceded to help them.

According to the court, on Monday, investigations began in the file after the agents of the border police at the level of Algiers International Airport Houari Boumediene, arrested a large number of foreign nationals who were workers of private and multinational companies, most of them are Turkish and Chinese, on the minutes of proof allowing them to leave the national territory without judicial or administrative rulings enabling them to extend their stay in Algeria.

In order to exploit this, the security authorities started an intensive investigation to find out the source of these licenses and discovered that they were signed by two police officers who are involved in handing over the licenses with the assistance of a Chinese translator who was the link between them and whom they met when they were used to translate documents at the service of foreigners, and she offered them the idea of handing over money in exchange for receiving documents to cross into their countries.

However, the police services arrested everyone and they confessed directly what they had done during their interrogation by the judicial police. On the basis of this, they were transferred to trial on charges of exploiting influence, receiving an undue advantage, and offering an undue advantage to third parties for foreigners who are followed in the file and whose number exceeded 15 nationals.

By appearing before the court, the defendant retracted her previous confessions during the investigation and said she had tried to help her relatives to obtain the documents and return to China, denying offering money in return for that.

The defendants (cops), for their part, changed their statements regarding their admission that they had received bribes from foreigners.

They denied all facts and a police officer “B.M” said that what he had done was merely a humanitarian act to help them and that he had previously handled dozens of files of the same type in the same way for six years in his post.

In view of the above data, the prosecution considered the charges fixed, and the evidence is sufficient to convict the defendants seeking a three-year sentence in force against all of them.