The money stolen from Ben Ali and his entourage… Why can’t Tunisia return it?

After the Tunisian revolution, the people rejoiced at the decision to freeze the funds and assets of the family of the deposed Tunisian president and people close to him and waited for billions of dollars to be returned to the state treasury. However, what the people have been waiting for for years is in vain, after the European Union officially announced the lifting of the freezing of seven members of the family of Zina El Abidine Ben Ali and persons close to her from the list of frozen assets, namely Qais bin Ali, Hamad bin Ali, Najm al-Din bin Ali and Najat. Ben Ali… The list also includes Muhammad al-Tarabulsi, Imad al-Latif and Nawfal al-Latif.

“Why all this confusion and uproar over issues that will not be resolved? The truth is that we were happy when our money as a people was frozen after the revolution in European countries, but in return we did not wait for any decisive results or our interest, and the reason is simply the inaction of successive government, or rather their complicity in obstructing this. Dossier. In the end, we deserve what’s happening to us.” In a harsh voice and rude words, the elderly Fouad Boughanemi expressed his anger towards Raseef 22. A citizen who seemed to have suffered years of persecution and waiting for this hopeless decision, like many others who hoped for the best after the revolution, but came to believe that nothing would happen to change.

Hanan Al-Awadi also told Raseef22 that “the circles of Leila Trabelsi and Ben Ali were not satisfied with what they took from us. They stole our ambitions and hopes for decades, and here they are again, winning another battle against us and returning the money they don’t have , and we are not surprised that one day they return to power.” “.

Hanan continued: “It is clear that we are a country addicted to missing opportunities. The opportunity to recover countless amounts of money could have turned the situation in Tunisia upside down. We had full confidence in our president, Qais Saeed, he promised us to recover our looted money from the circles Ben Ali, and we were just afraid that this file was closed from the beginning, and we didn’t hear the numbers about it, nor the developments, nor even the president of the country who gave us an explanation about what was happening. Is this how things are going? And What are they so preoccupied with? And, “If we were given back the looted money, we wouldn’t stop at a kilo of sugar and a liter of milk. .. And when we were waiting for the International Monetary Fund to come to us with a loan.”

“The circles of Leila Trabelsi and Ben Ali were not satisfied with what they took from us. They stole our ambitions and hopes for decades, and here they are again, winning another battle against us and returning money that is not theirs.”

In January 2021, an official of the Tunisian presidency said that the Swiss Federal Council had announced that the administrative freeze on part of the assets belonging to the family of the late President Ben Ali would expire at midnight on the nineteenth of the same month, and that they had been informed of this matter through diplomatic channels. The official added that as a result of lifting the asset freeze, between 30 and 50 people from Ben Ali’s circles will be able to recover this money, particularly his wife Leila Trabelsi and her brother Belhassan.

Commenting on “this unfair decision” for that, I look, he said that the decision to lift the freeze is not only new for Tunisian diplomacy, but rather the collapse of the populist and false rhetoric of President Kais Said, who always claimed to want to return the looted funds without any diplomatic efforts or procedural, at the level of expectations of the Tunisian people who have been striving for the return of their looted funds for more than a decade.

I carefully added that although the President had formed a committee to recover the looted funds about two years ago, personally chaired by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, this committee remained an ambiguous point, especially with the President’s repeated promises to return the “Tunisian money”, because it did not meet nor did it publish reports on its work. Although the order on its establishment stipulates that the committee submits a report to the President of the Republic every three months on its work and the progress of work, only false promises remained, such as the rest of the promises made by the President more than 3 years ago.

Over time, it became clear that Tunisia failed to recover its lost rights not only for internal reasons, but also for external reasons, as it did not respect legal procedures and deadlines in relations with foreign countries regarding the file.

Youssef Belkacem, program director at I am Watching, told Raseef22: “The organization was good in the beginning, especially after the dossier monitoring committee was established. However, like its predecessors, it had no achievements, reports or even meetings. We hold the commission and its form liable for negligence.” He added: “These people whose money has been frozen abroad have appointed lawyers to follow their cases and recover what they consider to be their legitimate rights. They have submitted annual requests to the European Union to lift the freeze in return for the lack of any serious move by Tunisian diplomacy.” in solving the file of the Tunisian people.”

“If we continue at the same pace, we expect the remaining 35 people to be delisted, and the lifting of the freeze on more than 10 people from 2015 will strengthen the position of the other people, not We note that the lack of political will will make the European Union and others despise Tunisia” , believes our interlocutor Youssef Belkacem.

At a time when the Tunisian authorities did not publish any official figures, and concrete statistics on the value of looted and smuggled funds abroad did not exist, the organization “Global Financial Integrity” estimated that the value of the thefts reached the limits of 60 billion US dollars since 1960, from a third of which – or the equivalent of 20 billion dollars – during the reign of deposed president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. The Tunisian Organization for Financial Transparency (a non-governmental organization) estimated this money at around $23 billion, and the Central Bank of Tunisia identified in 2015 looted assets and funds in ten countries, namely Switzerland, France, Canada and Belgium, along with the UAE, Germany, Italy, Spain, Lebanon and Luxembourg.

Over time, it became clear that Tunisia failed to recover its lost rights not only for internal reasons, but also for external reasons, as it did not respect legal procedures and deadlines in relations with foreign countries regarding the file. In fact, she has been working since the birth of her revolution to monitor the value of financial theft deposited in foreign banks, through the Financial Analysis Committee of the Central Bank, and thanks to the coordination with her colleagues from countries that have frozen balances, and its movements directed during the period between 2011 and the end 2014, on Relying on the “Star” initiative of the World Bank and the United Nations with the aim of utilizing all the necessary resources for the training of all those involved in the file and the development of their expertise, while obtaining African financial support that allowed him to be granted legal powers to undertake files abroad .

The requirement of “corruption of the source” was a serious obstacle for the Tunisian authorities, who were exhausted by the difficulty of proving the crime of financial corruption committed by the environment of the former regime and people close to Ben Ali.

Despite the meager and disappointing efforts and lack of the necessary enthusiasm to produce data that would restore some dignity to the Tunisian people regarding one of the most important unresolved issues in which they see an opportunity to save the failing economy and restore social stability, they have encountered the intransigence and reluctance of the financial havens to cooperate and publish the size of the frozen funds at all. Correct, because it is prescribed that Tunisia prove the so-called the corruption of the source, so that he could cooperate with it in this file, with the exception of Switzerland, which is the only European country that has given an accurate figure on the amount of funds that it has frozen for its interests, which is estimated at 60 million euros.

The “source of corruption” requirement was a serious hurdle for Tunisian authorities, who were exhausted by the difficulty of proving crimes of financial corruption committed by the former regime’s entourage and people close to Ben Ali and Tripolitania, despite their ability to seize wanted lists of people who smuggled wealth from the earth.

Regarding the possibility of recovering that money despite the numerous obstacles we talked about, economist Abdul Jalil Al-Badawi told Raseef22 that it is very difficult, as it requires a legal team familiar with international laws, treaties and money laundering operations. case, Tunisia is obliged to conduct internal judicial investigations according to which evidence and documents are delivered to the countries to which the funds were smuggled.

“Assuming that Tunisia has taken the previous steps, it is believed that the country needs decades to recover the money in light of the slowness of international court proceedings and requests for documents and statistics that are not available to the Tunisian government,” he said.

He emphasized that “banking secrecy in many countries, such as Switzerland, prevents access to the names and addresses of depositors, unless the Tunisian government obtains court decisions from international courts supported by evidence and documents.”

In short, the file of looted and smuggled money in Tunisia is no different from other files still sitting on the shelves covered with dust, waiting for politicians’ conflicts to be resolved and their battles to be concluded, and perhaps they also need a strong government aware of the diplomatic tools that give it courage to put pressure on countries and international financial institutions to prevent In order to cooperate with her in this type of file without restrictions or conditions.