The development of a proposed law of judicial arrangement to allow businessmen who have abused public money, to regularize their situations, in return for a commitment from each of them to finance projects in all delegations of Tunisia which will be ranked in descending order from the poorest to the least poor has been announced Wednesday by President Kais Saied as he met President of the Tunisian Confederation of Industry, Trade and Handicrafts (UTICA) Samir Majoul.
Only 460 businessmen out of 150 thousand members of the UTICA are involved in cases of spoliation of public money and they are liable for an amount of 13,500 billion, according to the Report of the National Commission on Corruption and Embezzlement of 2011, Saied pointed out.
The Report of the National Commission on Corruption and Embezzlement of 2011, often called the Report of Abdelfattah Amor, a lawyer and human rights activist (who died in January 2012), who served as chairman of the commission, did not make public the names of businessmen involved in corruption and embezzlement.
But he did a report on approximately 5,000 requests investigated out of 11,000 filed with the commission’s office until the end of 2011, by natural and legal persons and more than 400 cases referred to the courts.
This report had included, through hundreds of files, supporting documents, illustrations of abuses and circumvention of funds and granting of undue favours to the family circle of the former president and his servants.
In the business world, the report noted legal and financial arrangements implemented by specialists, to facilitate massive fraud in the legislation in force.
“Public contracts, privatizations, changes in the use of agricultural land, the granting of import or marketing authorizations (cars, alcohol, etc.) or the export of certain products, or the allocation of plots of land for construction in certain areas, had become the prerogative of the presidency to the detriment of the legally competent services.
The privatization of enterprises did not preserve the interests of the public treasury in various cases. Instead, the procedure has deviated in such a way as to allow the former president’s relatives and certain privileged businessmen to access these enterprises at prices below their market value. The commission had prioritized files, depending on the extent of corruption and embezzlement and also the amounts of these embezzlements.
Source: TAP News Agency