Moroccan Bank Director and Employees Jailed for $1 Million Embezzlement Scheme
The director of a bank and 3 employees were sentenced to 26 years in prison, accompanied by a fine of 100,000 dirhams. They are accused of embezzling 10 million dirhams.
In addition to real estate properties, 4 million dirhams were seized from the accounts of the branch manager, whose sentence was 6 years in prison. The 3 other defendants each received a sentence of 5 years in prison.
The main instigator, the director of a bank branch in Essaouira, had been arrested on June 12 at his home in Marrakech. A complaint had been filed against him by the regional management in Fez, for embezzlement and breach of trust.
According to Kech24, the banker had been unmasked thanks to a simple account transfer operation to a branch in Fez. Suspicions of fraud had prompted the regional management to demand an internal audit. The accused had indeed diverted 3.5 million dirhams from the account of a private individual.
And that was not all. The individual had drawn from several bank accounts and no less than 10 million dirhams had been embezzled from the branch.
