Judicial Investigations Into Fictitious Jobs And Exorbitant Wages In A Sonatrach Branch

The Bir Mourad Rais Court in upper Algiers is currently investigating a heavy corruption file versus the Algerian hydrocarbons company pertaining to the achievement of industrial projects “Sarbi”, which is based in the eastern province of M’sila, and it is one of the branches of the largest oil complex in Algeria “Sonatrach”, in which 170 people were implicated, including 7 defendants who formed a “network” to steal and transfer the company’s money with fraud for more than 10 years, between 2011 and 2022, through which they looted billions of dinars through “fictitious employment”, by hacking the company’s wage management system.
As for the details in the possession of “Echorouk”, the file is being investigated by the investigating judge of the third chamber of the Bir Mourad Rais court, who revealed serious facts. We suffice to mention only part of them for the confidentiality of the investigation, as the merits of the case date back to a complaint filed by the president and general manager of the “Sarbi” company.
At the beginning of October 2022, following audits in the company’s wage management system, they found dangerous information about the activity of a network specialized in stealing and transferring money from a branch of the Sonatrach complex in the same province, by defrauding people, and later it turned out that they were also involved in the crime of accepting “fake jobs” and monthly wages, even though they have nothing to do with the company.
According to Echorouk’s sources, the network’s members request the job application files of those concerned and hire them without carrying out their duties. Then, salaries that were paid to them illegally are pumped out, and they receive their wages from home. Through investigation, it was found that there are people who receive between 4, 5 and 6 wages at once each month, and their salaries range between 50,000 and 60,000 and reach 150,000 Algerian dinars, or 15 million centimes. And the matter did not stop at this point only, but the members of the network, through hacking the wage management system, pump additional sums of money amounting to between 100 million and 200 million centimes, and it even reached 300 million centimes, and then they ask those concerned to withdraw it in cash after they are informed that this money was inadvertently pumped, only to be received again by gang members.
According to Echorouk’s sources, the investigating judge heard 162 defendants for the first time, and recently interrogated 100 others, with a total of 262 accused, after 7 members of the network were arrested, while the search is still underway for the rest of the individuals who are on the run.
The investigation continues at the level of the third chamber of the Bir Mourad Rais Court, which will reveal violations of serious facts in the case, and it is likely that it will be shifted to the economic and financial penal pole in Sidi M’hamed, which specializes in such files, given the seriousness of the facts and the millions of dinars that have been stolen from the public treasury.