Real Estate Mayors, Notaries Involved in Fraud Scandal in Algiers
The First Instance Criminal Court of Dar el-Beida in Algiers will open, here on Thursday, a corruption case in which 25 defendants, including real estate mayors in central Algiers and Bir Mourad Rais, are being investigated for their involvement in real estate “business” in the upscale neighbourhoods of Algiers, with sums of money amounting to DZD 6 billion per piece of land. This is done by falsifying records dating back to the colonial era by exploiting elderly people.
The case was sparked by the research platoon of the regional group of the Algerian gendarmerie, following information received by its services, indicating the activity of a professional criminal network consisting of 17 people, specializing in “real estate business” in the upscale neighbourhoods of the capital, such as Hydra, Kouba, and Baba Hassen, as well as neighbourhoods belonging to the municipalities of Saoula, Khraisia, and Douera.
Taking advantage of the available information, and after careful investigations by the research faction, all the people involved were identified. The case concerns four real estate mayors and employees who worked in the real estate governorates, along with brokers.
Investigations revealed, according to Echorouk sources, that members of the network are involved in forging contracts, obliterating traces and extracting documents. The intermediaries work to hunt down customers, most of whom are old men and women over the age of 70. At the same time, the real estate mayors forge contracts by extracting old folders dating back to the colonial era and replace the real estate owners who are dead with other names over the age of 70, so that the lands were sold to the new owners as if they had inherited them from their fathers and with forged contracts.
Investigations also showed that members of the network are selling lands located in upscale neighbourhoods, such as Hydra and Kouba. The price of one piece of land reaches DZD 6 billion. In contrast, the lands that were sold in each of Khraisia, Douera, and Baba Hassen range between DZD 14 and 25 million, and the last operation carried out by members of the network involved the sale of 3 pieces of land, one in Hydra and two in Kouba, with forged contracts, with a total financial value of DZD 20 billion.
Furthermore, the investigations showed violations and blatant manipulation of the descriptive schedule for dividing real estate and lands owned by the state, as this manipulation resulted in the creation of fake floors and areas intending to seize real estate and property, with the complicity of officials within the real estate governorates.
Security investigations concluded that the looting of property in the Saoula area reached a record level, where the former real estate mayor of Bir Mourad Rais was involved, and he was placed in temporary detention in the penal institution in El Harrach. A case that also brought 10 notaries and 120 beneficiaries of lands in the region to the judicial authorities, after they forged 13 ownership contracts and 6 of the defendants sold pieces of land for billions using forged documents.
Another recorded scandal related to the creation of fake floors and areas in one of the buildings in the Diar Es-Saada neighbourhood in Algiers through the use of forged documents in official documents related to the descriptive table for a division, which resulted in the creation of a fictitious floor with the recording of incorrect facts in a sales contract in which a fictitious area estimated at 218 square meters was deducted from the areas of the building’s owners, and the issuance of a real estate booklet in violation of real estate legislation and laws with the same area of 218 square metres, in addition to disposing of real estate in a manner that violates the law and completing the transfer process in violation of the legislation and State Property Assignment Law No. 81.01 of February 7, 1981.
