Morocco probes university lecturer for “money laundering”

RABAT - Moroccan authorities are probing university lecturer Maati Monjib for money laundering that allowed him to acquire several properties and land.

Monjib, who claims he earns his living from his salary as a lecturer, went Sunday on a three-day hunger strike to protest against what he called in a post on Facebook “police and judicial harassment against my family and in particular my young sister who has been undergoing marathon interrogations for several days.”

This is not the first time that Monjib went on a hunger strike. In 2015, he did it after being accused of having embezzled sums of over three million dirhams ($330,000) from the account of his Ibn Rochd Centre, which Moroccan daily al- Ahdath said was presented as an NGO abroad while being registered as a public limited company (Ltd) in Morocco.

Monjib was accused of receiving subsidies from abroad and diverting them to his personal accounts and those of his relatives, including his sister’s.

In November 2015, Al-Ahdath revealed that Monjib’s bank account where he was receiving his salary was not touched between 2013 and 2015, which contradicted his claim.

“I reiterate here that I am completely innocent of false and defamatory financial accusations and that I have never threatened state security: things that I am accused of without any proof,” wrote Monjib on Facebook, calling on several media outlets to stop their defamatory campaign against him and his family.  

But Chouf TV, Morocco’s most popular web TV, exposed in an editorial published on October 11 Monjib’s dozens of properties along with his sister Fatema Monjib’s which are worth millions of dirhams in a reply to calling some media outlets as offices of “political police.”

Editorialist Abou Wael Al-Riffi defied Monjib and his sister, who was his partner at the Ibn Rochd Centre Ltd that was receiving funds from overseas before being dissociated, to prove how they financed all the listed properties and land.

Le360 news website claims that Fatema is not working while her husband is “a daily worker,” raising a huge question mark about her wealth.

It is this discrepancy between the income declared by the Monjibs and their personal assets that drew the attention of the Financial Intelligence Processing Unit (UTRF) which prompted the prosecution to open an investigation for possible money laundering.

Monjib’s Facebook post faced a string of criticism from Moroccans who urged him to justify his wealth to prove his innocence.