Emergency In Algerian Airports To Catch Foreign Airlines That Smuggle Hard Currency

Algerian Central Bank launched a state of emergency a week ago, because of the investigations into the suspicious funds and financial transactions for foreign airlines that are operating in Algeria, which resorted to fraudulent ways that enabled them to smuggle hard currency, through the organization of flights through airports .

Investigations that were launched by the Central Bank of Algeria, based on a report that was prepared by investigators of Customs services at Algiers international airport, Houari Boumedienne, that was sent to the Ministry of Finance, which included serious facts about the involvement of a number of foreign airlines in illegal activities, and smuggled huge amounts of money abroad, causing large losses to the public treasury.

Several sources told Echorouk that the report revealed the malicious ways that are used by foreign airlines to smuggle money and transfer it to abroad, through the sale of tickets of some destinations for the Algerians in Dinar currency instead of hard currency that is beneficial to the state treasury, and the use of the tickets’ No. ticket on behalf of one person twice or several times, even though that person did not travel to the destination in question, but only once, along with the fraudulent declaration in the total amount of the total tickets that are acquired by travelers, especially as the Algerian passenger buys a ticket in dinars and the foreign airlines transfer them into its banks in hard currency, along with the manipulating in the exchange bonds.

Transfer of money by the involved airlines according to our sources, began in 2001, the year when the central bank issued the instruction No. 05-2001 dated on September 4 of the same year, which confirms that the issuance of tickets for flights overseas to Algeria that are paid in Algerian dinars is only for the benefit of the departments and institutions of the state and local groups under the receipts of request for the benefit of private persons, who are subject to the Algerian law, and who are registered regularly in the commercial register on the flight that are identified from abroad to Algeria, and this in an exceptional manner, for the benefit of their clients and foreign technicians who are not residents, and who are invited to visit Algeria in the framework of the implementation of deals or offshore contracts in advance, in accordance with the applicable regulation.

Sources from some banks told Echorouk that the Central Bank of Algeria dispatched notaries to notify the concerned airlines about the abuses, and that extensive investigations have been opened into the case, while Air Algérie sent an urgent correspondence to all agencies and warned them of falling in excesses during the transfer of funds and ticketing process, by preventing the use of airline tickets that acquired in Algerian dinars on trips abroad with the exception of tickets that are issued in favor of the authorized persons by the applicable according to the instruction of the Bank of Algeria No. 05-2001, on the background of the investigations that were initiated by the security services, especially as the primary victims of these fraudulent operations are Air Algérie and the public treasury.

The report, which was received by the Central Bank, is the second after the report that was prepared by the Customs services in 2013, that was prepared in three stages, and this since the year 2011 up to 2014, which included a number of law violations by 6 foreign airlines, like transferring hard currency aboard in fraudulent ways, which deprived the public treasury, and over the years, from large fiscal revenues.