Saharamedias.net – Mauritanian businessman Brahim O. Gadda aka Bahay said that the funds entrusted to him by former President Mohamed O. Abdel Aziz during his years in power exceeded 7 billion, consisting mainly of currencies (the euro and the dollar).
Ould Gadda testified on Monday before the court responsible for trying the former president and some of his closest aides in the case of the decade, accused of corruption, influence peddling, money laundering and illicit enrichment. .
Ould Gadda testified in the context of a cut made on the space of the Olympic stadium on which a building was built to house a medical clinic.
He also testified about the funds entrusted to him by ould Abdel Aziz.
Ould Gadda first declared that he remains committed through his statements made before the police responsible for economic crimes and before the courts, adding that his relationship with Ould Abdel Aziz dates from the 1990s before developing significantly in 2005 when he had began to entrust him with significant funds.
He said he could not precisely determine the amounts he received from Ould Abdel Aziz but that he estimated them at millions of dollars, adding that these amounts were given to him by one of the relatives of the former president and sometimes directly.
In response to a question from the general prosecutor’s office, ould Gadda clarified that the funds he has kept for ould Abdel Aziz since 2009, the date of his first election, is 7,100,000,000 ouguiyas and that between 2017 and 2020 all the amounts received from him were in euros and dollars.
The last funds entrusted were in the first months of 2019 in addition to an amount received in January 2020 before the investigation began and everything stopped.
About the clinic built on the land cut off from the Olympic stadium, Ould Gadda said that Ould Abdel Aziz told him that he was looking for funding for this clinic and that in the absence of this funding he decided on his own. even fund it.
He had put him in touch with a certain “ould Cherouk” in charge of the construction of the clinic to whom he gave 1,800,000,000 MRO entirely spent for the work.
After this amount released for the construction of the clinic, he remained at his disposal, on behalf of Ould Abdel Aziz, 4,800,000,000 MRO.
Brahim O. Gadda added that when the police in charge of economic crimes contacted him, he asked for a court order to return the amounts to him which he subsequently did through the channel he deemed appropriate, adding that this amount, on instruction of the police, was paid into an account belonging to the deposit and development fund (CDD).
He denied having benefited from markets under the Ould Abdel Aziz regime, stating that his group has been involved in trade since the 1990s and that it is heavily involved in the country’s economy, particularly in the food sector. importation of food products and that he collaborated with all the successive regimes.
Ould Gadda also specified that under the regime of ould Abdel Aziz, his group was the victim of two injustices, the first when he had imported 27,000 tons of wheat on behalf of SONIMEX during the last period of power of the late Sidi O. Cheikh Abdallahi.
After the coup, SONIMEX denounced the market and the problem is still pending in the courts.
Addressing the court, Brahim O. Gadda said: “You have to ask two of the former prime ministers and successive finance ministers, Moctar O. Djay, O. Raïss, Thiam Diombar and the minister of mines if the group of Ehel Gadda benefited from anything during the power of ould Abdel Aziz.
In this context, he rejected what he called overbidding about the Ehel Gadda group which, he said, is an efficient economic group which greatly contributes to the availability of food products in the country.
The public prosecutor’s office then made a clarification, specifying that the questions were addressed to the person of Brahim O. Gadda and not to the Ehel Gadda group.
After this hearing, the president of the court suspended the hearing which will resume next Monday, justifying his decision by the beginning of the last decade of the blessed month of Ramadan.
Source : Saharamedias.net
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