A court has convicted former Algerian Energy Minister Chakib Jelil of corruption, in a new sentence in absentia against the former politician, now a fugitive in the United States after the court also ratified the international arrest warrant against him.
This sentence follows a 20-year sentence handed down last year against Jelil, who is under investigation for the payment of bribes by a subsidiary of the Italian giant ENI to obtain contracts.
The Sidi M’Hamed Anti-Corruption Court in the capital Algiers has also sentenced to between five and ten years in prison former ministers Amar Ghoul (Transport) and Mohamed Bedjaoui (Foreign), along with two former heads of Algeria’s state oil operator Sonatrach, Nuredin Buterfa and Abdelmumen uld Kaddur, the official Algerian news agency APS reported Thursday.
Jelil, for whom the aforementioned arrest warrant had been hanging over him since 2013, returned to Algeria in 2016 after a provisional withdrawal of the charges. However he ended up fleeing the country in 2019, following the resignation of President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, at which point the investigations resumed.
A possible extradition of Jelil from the United States seems unfeasible right now due to the absence of bilateral agreements on the matter between Algeria and the United States, specialized lawyers inform the news portal Jeune Afrique.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
