The gold and the 1,100 billion centimes scandal before the judiciary on October 23

The Economic and Financial Penal Pole Court in Sidi M’hamed in Algiers postponed, on Wednesday, until October 23, the trial of the defendants in the gold smuggling, tax fraud and money laundering case within an organized criminal group.
The judge of the third branch of the Economic and Financial Penal Pole in Sidi M’hamed decided to postpone the trial of more than 70 defendants being prosecuted in the gold smuggling case until October 23, at the request of the defense team on the one hand, and considering that it is the first session, as the lawyers asked the judge to release their clients who are detained until the trial, while the public prosecutor demanded that the investigating judge’s decision be upheld, so the judge decided to refuse to release the defendants.
The trial was scheduled after the Indictment Chamber of the Algiers Judicial Council decided, on September 10, to uphold the decision of the investigating judge of the Sixth Chamber of the Economic and Financial Penal Pole to classify the facts on the basis of a “misdemeanor” and rejected the requests of the Public Prosecutor who requested to classify the facts on the basis of a “felony”.
The defendants in the case are being prosecuted for corruption related to gold smuggling, tax fraud, money laundering, within the framework of an organized criminal group, forgery and the use of forged documents, and the practice of fraudulent commercial activities and violations of the Exchange Law.
The Economic and Financial Pole Court confirmed on May 17, 2023, that the case came as a result of a report related to the practice of fraudulent commercial activities harmful to the national economy through the illegal trade in precious metals and fraudulent maneuvers to evade taxes, so that a preliminary investigation into these facts was opened, through which cash deposits of very significant amounts of money were revealed and their source was disguised through complex bank transfers, with the complicity of public employees to justify the fictitious payment of fictitious sales invoices related to fictitious commercial activities.
In early May 2023, the National Security Services were able to dismantle a criminal network consisting of 25 people, specializing in illegal gold trading, with the recovery of seized items and money worth more than 330 billion centimes.
The operation was carried out thanks to the effective exploitation of information received in this regard and the development of a systematic operational plan that allowed the seizure and recovery of seized items, consisting of “a quantity of gold exceeding 135 kg and another exceeding 180 kg of silver, including 140 kg of raw material, in addition to the recovery of 5 billion Algerian centimes and 32 thousand euros, with the freezing of bank accounts estimated at more than 135 billion centimes”.
The in-depth investigations supported by procedures to extend the jurisdiction, accompanied by a search warrant for the company’s headquarters and the residences of the suspects, led to the identification of the members of the network who come from the states of Batna, Constantine, Biskra and the capital.
Accordingly, it was found that “the main accused, aged 59, residing in Ibn Aknoun, Algiers, resorted to importing gold from abroad using the commercial register of the company he manages, taking advantage of the facilities provided by the exchange law in purchasing hard currency at the bank rate.”
According to investigations by the National Security Services, the accused resorts to “selling the imported gold on the black market to deposit the financial proceeds into his own bank account, using commercial registers extracted in the name of the network members for fictitious activities that do not exist in reality and with the complicity of employees of a national bank.” Investigators also discovered “the huge volume of transactions and financial movements recorded in the bank account of the main mastermind, which exceeded 1,100 billion centimes.”