Nouakchott - Since Cinderella Merhej, the lawyer for former President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, announced that “her client (the former president) told her that the source of his money was an Arab ruler. ” Mauritanian politicians, lawyers and bloggers have been preoccupied with the money of their former president, its size and source, and everyone is asking the big question: Where does this president come from?
Under the title “Gestures in Gifts Presented to Presidents,” lawyer Mohamed Sidi Abdel Rahman wrote, commenting on the wealth of the former Mauritanian president, “The exchange of gifts is one of the things known to mankind since ancient times; It is not against diplomatic norms that heads of state receive symbolic gifts (antiques, pieces of furniture, paintings) during their visits and receptions.
He said, "In France, President Francois Hollande, for example, received, over the course of his five-year mandate and ended in 2017, a total of 2,500 gifts, but the gifts presented to the President of the French Republic are not considered his personal property, but rather the property of the French people, and therefore they are deposited in Alma's store (ALMA), located on the edge of the Seine River in Paris.
“In addition to the gifts presented to the president, lawyer Mohamed Sidi adds, there are gifts presented to the first lady in this safe; The gifts of the Republic are supervised by Hafiz who classifies, photographs and controls their sources, and opens the store to visitors annually on Heritage Day, and before the end of the president’s mandate (terms), he decides what to transfer to public museums and hands over the rest to the State Property Department.
Regarding the constitutional aspect in this case, lawyer Mohamed Sidi asserted, “Article 24 of the constitution states the following: “The president of the republic is the protector of the constitution and he is the one who embodies the state and guarantees, as a rule, the steady and orderly functioning of public authorities; He is the guarantor of national independence and land ownership.”
“According to this article, the lawyer says, the President of the Republic, who embodies the state, may not receive monetary gifts from one of his citizens, rather than from a foreign person, because that would weaken his personality and make him a hostage to the will of (the favored) who does not exclude that he has private goals.” It may affect the country's sovereignty or its interests.
He said, "To sum up, if the President of the Republic is to receive in-kind gifts (of mostly symbolic value), he does not have the right to conceal them or own them because they belong to the people, and he does not have the right to receive cash sums. .
The journalist Shanouf Ma asked how, within this debate, questions to the former president’s lawyer, in which he said, “If we assume, for argument’s sake, that the source of the former president’s money is donations from a Gulf leader, would he have given him all that money if he were just an ordinary Mauritanian citizen?
Since the money was given to him as president of Mauritania, why did he not hand over this money to the state treasury?
If the source of his money was transparent, why did he not declare it as required by law?”
Blogger Hammoud Sidia commented, "In the United States, the president's gifts cannot exceed $280, and when they exceed that amount, they are returned directly to the American treasury."
"The US Treasury demanded Dick Cheney, former Vice President Bush, for a watch that was given to him, valued at $100,000," he said.
As for the blogger Abeer Ben, he said, “The source of the wealth of the former Mauritanian president is the Libyan plane loaded with jewelry and gold that the Libyan regime sent to hide in Mauritania, and the son of Bouamatou took five billion dollars from it, and it was the reason for the dispute that broke out between him and the son of Abdel Aziz, in addition to the property of the head of intelligence.” Former Libya Abdullah Al-Senussi.
"These frozen properties must be returned to the Libyan state," he said.
Mauritanian bloggers and politicians were preoccupied last year with an hour and a pen with which former President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz appeared in one of his press conferences, which he held after he was accused of corruption and waste of public money.
Bloggers confirmed, "The former president appeared wearing a gold watch encrusted with jewels, the price of which is 21 million ounces (about 53,000 euros) and with a pen from the brand" Mont Blah ", the price of which is only about 400,000 ounces (1,000 euros)."
Most of the participants in this debate stopped at comparisons between the enormous wealth that was revealed to the accused and members of his immediate family, with what he stated in 2010 in the minutes of the declaration of property before the Committee on Transparency in Public Life when he assumed his position as President of the Republic, and what he declared after that in The identical statement when he left office in 2019, before the same authority.
Everyone unanimously agreed that “these comparisons clearly and clearly revealed enormous wealth, which was confirmed by the former president himself in several of his media outlets, stressing at the same time that “his money does not contain a single dirham taken from the Mauritanian public treasury.”
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