DR ‹ › The Criminal Chamber for Financial Crimes at the Marrakech Court of Appeals on Friday, January 30, delivered its verdict in the case known as the «COP22 contracts scandal», a file estimated to have cost around 280 million dirhams. The case involves Mohamed Larbi Belcaid, former mayor of Marrakech from the Justice and Development Party (PJD), and his first deputy Younes Bensliman, who later left the PJD to join the National Rally of Independents (RNI). Both were prosecuted on charges related to the mismanagement and misuse of public funds. The court sentenced the two defendants to two years in prison each, fined them 40,000 dirhams, and ordered them to pay four million dirhams in civil compensation to the Moroccan state. The proceedings stem from a complaint filed in 2017 by Abdelilah Tatouch, president of the National Association for the Defense of Human Rights and the Protection of Public Funds, over suspected irregularities in negotiated contracts linked to the COP22 climate conference, hosted in Marrakech in 2016. The case has spanned nearly nine years. In October 2022, the Court of First Instance acquitted Belcaid while sentencing Bensliman to a one-year suspended prison term, a fine, and the confiscation of funds from his bank accounts. That ruling was upheld by the Court of Appeals in May 2024. However, in July 2025, the Court of Cassation overturned the decision and referred the case back to a different judicial panel. Belcaid was charged with the felony of embezzlement of public funds entrusted to him by virtue of his position, while Bensliman faced charges of complicity in the embezzlement of public funds, in addition to influence peddling and illicitly obtaining benefits within an institution he managed or supervised.
