Former Algerian Prime Minister Ahmed Ouyahia faces a new severe prison sentence, the second in a matter of months, after being convicted in a corruption case linked to a business tycoon.
An Algerian court issued a verdict on Wednesday on the car assembly plant case involving Ouyahia and Abdelmalek Sellal, former ministers and businessmen.
Last year, a court jailed Ouyahia, who served four times as prime minister under former President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, for 15 years and Sellal, who served twice as prime minister, to 12 years in another corruption case.
The cases are linked to the car assembly industry in the north African country and illegal financing of Bouteflika’s election campaign.
The court issued a 12-year prison sentence against Ouyahia, and a 3-year sentence and a fine against former industry minister Youcef Yousfi, announcing his innocence of the charge of bribery.
The court also issued a 20-year sentence, a fine, and an arrest warrant against former industry minister Abdeslam Bouchouareb.
Mourad Eulmi, the head of the Algerian family-owned firm SOVAC which runs an assembly plant with Germany’s Volkswagen AG, was convicted and given a 10-year imprisonment.
The court case included “money laundering”, “smuggling public money abroad”, “evading the payment of taxes,” “granting loans from government banks out of interest to a businessman”, and “adapting the government job to a private interest.”
When questioned by the judge, Ouyahia defended himself by saying that all policies in the field of industrial investment, especially the activity of installing cars, were developed by former President Bouteflika, and that he was only the executor of those policies.
He added that he used to report daily to Bouteflilka about government works.
