(Corrects headline and first paragraph to show Chahed and former ministers were charged with harming Tunisia’s national interest through their handling of a corruption case, not with corruption itself)
By Tarek Amara
TUNIS, March 3 (Reuters) – A Tunisian court on Tuesday jailed the country’s richest businessman, Marouan Mabrouk, for corruption while giving prison terms to a former prime minister and several other former cabinet members for their handling of the case.
Mabrouk, a son-in-law of Tunisia’s former President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, who was ousted in 2011, has been held in prison since late 2023.
Chahed, who served as prime minister from 2016 to 2020, is in the United States and his sentence was issued in absentia. Chahed ddenied any wrongdoing saying the charges were politically motivated.
Mabrouk is part of an influential family with business interests in trade, banking, communications and car dealerships. Mabrouk also controls a major supermarket chain and owns shares in BIAT Bank, French telecoms operator Orange and a biscuit company.
He is one of Ben Ali’s few relatives who did not flee Tunisia after a revolution in 2011 that toppled Ben Ali.
Mabrouk, however, has faced criticism that he received support and protection from successive governments after 2011.
Mabrouk was charged with money laundering, stealing funds from state companies and obtaining illegal benefits from Chahed’s government, while Chahed received a judgement for his government’s lifting of an asset freeze imposed on Mabrouk.
Chahed, along with the former foreign minister, finance minister, human rights minister and information and communication technologies minister, were each sentenced to six years in prison and a fine of $800 million.
President Kais Saied, who seized control of the government and dissolved parliament in 2021 in a move that the opposition described as a coup, created a committee in 2022 to collect money from business owners allegedly involved in financial corruption cases, to reduce Tunisia’s budget deficit.
Saied had said that these business owners must pay and that the state would not give up what is owed to it.
He said the state would collect no less than $5 billion. However, after several years, the reconciliation committee has not announced any amounts had been received.
(Reporting by Tarek AmaraEditing by Ros Russell, William Maclean and Angus Mcdwall)
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