Transparency Morocco and the Moroccan Association for Human Rights (AMDH) had filed, in December 2021, a complaint with the Public Ministry relating to the agreements and contracts concluded by the Ministry of Health during the period of the health crisis linked to Covid- 19. This same complaint that the prosecution finally ” classified ” for ” lack of evidence“. Answer ” abnormal according to Transparency Maroc, which apparently does not intend to give up.
Contracts concluded outside the scope of the law, non-compliance with the rules governing the decree on public contracts and the judicial system. These are the reasons behind the complaint filed in early December 2021 by Transparency Morocco and the AMDH with the Public Ministry against a number of officials from the department of Khalid Ait Taleb, and even against the minister himself.
The two organizations which have public interest status relied, before filing their complaint, on the report of the parliamentary exploratory commission which looked into the irregularities in the awarding of public contracts concluded by the Ministry of Health in the context of the fight against the pandemic.
” This is a request that we filed jointly with the AMDH. But unfortunately, we were surprised by the response of the Public Prosecutor who decided to close the case. We were officially told that there were not enough clues to conclude that there is any irregularity“, confided to MoroccoLatestNews UKAhmed Bernoussi, Secretary General of Transparency Morocco.
A response that was not to the liking of the two organizations. ” We consider this response abnormal. The parliamentary commission which carried out the investigations has shown that the law has not been respected concerning the approval of companies which have obtained public contracts from the Ministry of Health“, Bernoussi explains to us.
According to the SG of Transparency Morocco, “ to be able to work in the public health sector and win contracts, you must have approval from the Ministry of Health. Except that several companies and businesses, having obtained contracts during the Covid period, do not have this approval. Which means that there was certainly a dysfunction in the application of the law, either favouritism, or clientelism or corruption.“, he argues.
When filing the complaint, Ahmed Bernoussi claims to have accompanied it with several pieces of evidence. » We relied first on the report produced by the parliamentary committee, then on the work carried out by an expert who studied the issue of transparency in the management of these public contracts.“, specifies our interlocutor whose organization has still not reacted to the response of the Public Prosecutor, but is studying the question.
It should be recalled that the Ministry of Health and Social Protection had denied in December 2021 the allegations reported in the complaint of the two organizations.
In a press release, the department of Khalid Ait Taleb had specified that the complaint, which targets the minister in charge, several officials in his department as well as companies operating in the pharmaceutical sector, “ contains a large number of untruths and ambiguities, in the same way that it exerts incomprehensible pressures on the sector, especially after the ministry has undertaken to pursue the consecration of a managerial governance imbued with transparency and quality , so as to block the way in front of the logic of the rent or the possibility of enjoying the markets of the sector by ignoring the legal norms “.
.
